The CIA and the Soviet Bloc: Political Warfare, the Origins of the CIA and Countering Communism in Europe 9780755623853, 9781780763934

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I am indebted to the Arts and Humanities Research Council for funding my postgraduate research, on which much of this book is based. I am extremely grateful to my PhD supervisor Scott Lucas at the University of Birmingham for his intellectual inspiration. I would also like to thank my parents Chris and Lesley and my sister Debs and brother Stuart for always being there to support and encourage me. I dedicate this book to two very special people in my life – Hui and Rebecca.

ABBREVIATIONS

ADPC ADSO AFL ASG CFM CIA CIG CIO Cominform Comintern CPSU DCI DDCI DDP DP DDRS ECA EDC ERP FRUS GDR IAC ICBM ICD

Assistant Director for Policy Coordination Assistant Director for Special Operations American Federation of Labor Advanced Study Group Council of Foreign Ministers Central Intelligence Agency Central Intelligence Group Congress of Industrial Organizations Communist Information Bureau Communist International Communist Party of the Soviet Union Director of Central Intelligence Deputy Director of Central Intelligence Deputy Director of Plans [Central Intelligence Agency] Displaced Person Declassified Documents Reference System Economic Cooperation Administration European Defence Community European Recovery Program Foreign Relations of the United States German Democratic Republic Intelligence Advisory Committee Intercontinental ballistic missile Information Control Division

ABBREVIATIONS

ISG JCS JSPC MAD MGB MIT NARA NATO NCFE NIE NME NSC NSRB OCB OIR OMGUS OPC OSO OSP OSS OUN PCI PCG PDF PPS PSB PZPR RFE RIAS RL SANACC

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Intelligence Survey Group Joint Chiefs of Staff Joint Subsidiary Plans Committee Mutually Assured Destruction Soviet Ministry of State Security Massachusetts Institute of Technology National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, Maryland North Atlantic Treaty Organization National Committee for a Free Europe National Intelligence Estimate National Military Establishment National Security Council National Security Resources Board Operations Coordinating Board Office of Intelligence and Research [State Department] Office of Military Government, United States Office of Policy Coordination Office of Special Operations [Central Intelligence Group/Agency] Office of Special Projects Office of Strategic Services Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists Italian Communist Party Planning Coordination Group [Covert Operations] Popular Democratic Front [Italian] Policy Planning Staff [State Department] Psychological Strategy Board Polish United Workers’ Party Radio Free Europe Radio in the American Sector Radio Liberty State– Army– Navy – Air Force Coordinating Committee

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SED SIS SPC SPD/S SPG SSE SSU SWNCC UB UNSC UPA VFC VOA WIN

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Socialist Unity Party [Communist Party, German Democratic Republic] Secret Intelligence Service [British] Special Policy Committee Special Projects Division for the Soviet Union Special Procedures Group [Central Intelligence Agency] Special Studies and Evaluation Strategic Services Unit [War Department] State– War– Navy Coordinating Committee Polish Security Police United Nations Security Council Ukrainian Insurgent Army Volunteer Freedom Corps Voice of America Freedom and Independence Movement [Polish]

NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL DIRECTIVES NSC 1/1 ‘The Position of the United States with Respect to Italy’, 14 November 1947 NSC 4 ‘Coordination of Foreign Information Measures’, 17 December 1947 NSC 4-A ‘Psychological Operations’, 17 December 1947 NSC 1/3 ‘Position of the United States With Respect to Italy in the Light of the Possibility of Communist Participation in the Government by Legal Means’, 8 March 1948 NSC 7 ‘Position of the United States with Respect to Soviet-Directed World Communism’, 30 March 1948 NSC 10 ‘Director of Special Studies’, 12 May 1948 NSC 10/1 ‘Office of Special Projects’, 15 June 1948 NSC 10/2 ‘Office of Special Projects’, 18 June 1948 NSC 18 ‘The Attitude of this Government Toward Events in Yugoslavia’, 6 July 1948

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NSC 20 ‘Appraisal of the Degree and Character of Military Preparedness Required by the World Situation’, 10 July 1948 NSC 20/1 ‘United States Objectives with Respect to Russia’, 18 August 1948 NSC 20/2 ‘Factors Affecting the Nature of US Defense Arrangements in the Light of Soviet Policies’, 25 August 1948 NSC 20/4 ‘U.S. Objectives with Respect to the USSR to Counter Soviet Threats to U.S. Security’, 23 November 1948 NSC 18/2 ‘Economic Relations between the United States and Yugoslavia’, 17 February 1949 NSC 18/4 ‘United States Policy Toward the Conflict Between the USSR and Yugoslavia’, 17 November 1949 NSC 58/2 ‘United States Policy Toward the Soviet Satellite States in Eastern Europe’, 8 December 1949 NSC 68, ‘United States Objectives and Programs for National Security’, 14 April 1950 NSC 10/4 ‘Responsibilities of CIA (OPC) with respect to Guerrilla Warfare’, 16 January 1951 NSC 114/1 ‘Status and Timing of Current U.S. Programs for National Security’, 8 August 1951 NSC 10/5 ‘Scope and Pace of Covert Operations’, 23 October 1951 NSC 135/1 ‘Reappraisal of United States Objectives and Strategy for National Security’, 15 August 1952

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NSC 135/3 ‘Reappraisal of United States Objectives and Strategy for National Security’, 25 September 1952 NSC 141 ‘Reexamination of United States Programs for National Security’, 19 January 1953 NSC 143/2 ‘A Volunteer Freedom Corps’, 20 May 1953 NSC 158 ‘United States Objectives and Actions to Exploit the Unrest in the Satellite States’, 29 June 1953 NSC 162/2 ‘Statement of Policy by the National Security Council on Basic National Security Policy’, 30 October 1953 NSC 174 ‘United States Policy Toward the Soviet Satellites in Eastern Europe’, 11 December 1953 NSC 5406/1 ‘United States Policy Towards Yugoslavia’, 6 February 1954 NSC 5412 ‘Covert Operations’, 15 March 1954 NSC 5505/1 ‘Exploitation of Soviet and European Satellite Vulnerabilities’, 31 January 1955 NSC 5412/1 ‘Covert Operations’, 12 March 1955 NSC 5524/1 ‘Basic U.S. Policy in Relation to the Four Power Negotiations’, 11 July 1955 NSC 5412/2 ‘Covert Operations’, 28 December 1955 NSC 5602/1 ‘Basic National Security Policy’, 15 March 1956 NSC 5608 ‘U.S. Policy Toward the Soviet Satellites in Eastern Europe’, 3 July 1956

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NSC 5608/1 ‘Statement of Policy on U.S. Policy Toward the Soviet Satellites in Eastern Europe’, 18 July 1956 NSC 5616 ‘U.S. Policy on Developments in Poland and Hungary’, 31 October 1956 NSC 5616/2 ‘Interim U.S. Policy on Developments in Poland and Hungary’, 19 November 1956 NSC 5811/1 ‘Statement of U.S. Policy toward the Soviet-Dominated Nations in Eastern Europe’, 24 May 1958

INTRODUCTION

On 12 April 1954, the exiled King Zog of Albania huddled around a radio with his son Prince Leka and the rest of his family at a villa in Alexandria, Egypt. They were listening in horror to the death sentence being passed by a judge in Tirana against five Albanian rebels. These men had all been trained by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and air-dropped into Albania many months before to raise a resistance movement to topple the Albanian communist ruler Enver Hoxha. The public announcement by Hoxha’s regime of the show trial and the execution of the e´migre´ fighters was, for the United States (US), compounded by the revelation that the entire mission to overthrow Hoxha had been thoroughly penetrated by the Albanian security services, the Sigurimi, several years earlier.1 Two years later, on 4 November 1956, Soviet tanks rolled onto the streets of Budapest in Hungary and brutally crushed the uprising that threatened to herald Hungary’s withdrawal from the Soviet orbit.2 The decision by the leaders in the Kremlin to intervene with massive military force in Hungary under Operation Whirlwind marked the final phase in a long and troubled campaign by the US government to wrest Soviet control from Eastern Europe without resorting to methods of war. The suppression of the Hungarian Revolution taught US policymakers, finally and decisively, that the American programme of political warfare against the Soviet bloc was

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ineffective against the overwhelming strength and determination of Soviet politico-military power in the East. This book tells the story of the American effort to challenge Soviet-communist power in Europe between 1945 and 1956. The development of an American programme to retract Soviet power from the East is intimately tied into the final phases of World War II and the early phases of the Cold War. It began with Washington’s ideological rejection of the projection of Soviet power into Eastern Europe by Soviet leader Joseph Stalin as the Red Army pushed back the German Wehrmacht during 1944 and 1945. Once Harry Truman entered the Oval Office following the death of Franklin Roosevelt in April 1945, the US government aspired to ‘liberate’ Eastern Europe from the client communist regimes that were installed by Moscow across the region. But the US was never willing to go to war to secure this objective, instead pursuing the ‘rollback’ of Soviet-communist power and influence through measures short of direct conflict under the auspices of the CIA – through what came to be known as political warfare. The CIA has become notorious for its covert political warfare capability over the course of its lifetime.3 It is sometimes inferred from this that the US government always intended the CIA to intervene abroad through clandestine political action.4 Evidence supporting this view has been located in Washington’s rapid development of political warfare machinery in the early Cold War to execute an offensive programme of operations against the Soviet bloc. Continuity has also been suggested between American wartime efforts to subvert Nazism and later subversive operations against Soviet-communist power by American peacetime intelligence agencies through a prevailing ‘Donovan tradition’ rooted in the wartime Office of Strategic Services (OSS).5 The historical record reveals that the acquisition of an offensive political warfare capability was not a consideration when the CIA was originally established during 1946 – 7.6 The political warfare capability that has become inextricably associated with the CIA was sanctioned by Truman’s National Security Council (NSC) only after the Agency was founded. The CIA gradually evolved its capacity

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and mission to undertake psychological and political warfare against communism in Europe under several top-secret directives beginning with NSC 4-A and NSC 10/2. But at the outset, the CIA and its forerunner the Central Intelligence Group (CIG) were established to perform intelligence roles, not to wage an offensive programme of political warfare operations abroad. It is important to distinguish between the CIA’s original purpose and its rapid expansion into new operational fields. There was significant, but not total, discontinuity between the wartime clandestine warfare capability under the OSS and the new intelligence units the CIG/CIA that were created for the post-war world. This discontinuity extended into the Agency’s nascent period and its later operation as a political warfare unit. The distinction between wartime and post-war roles also illuminates a far more important point. The US government lacked a long-term strategic approach towards waging political warfare. The CIA was not founded as part of a ‘master plan’ to wage and win the Cold War alongside the development of the national security state. The Agency was not designed by foresighted American policymakers to embody the machinery to take on and defeat the Soviet Union in an unconventional subversive conflict in the realm of culture, politics and ideology. To the contrary, the CIA’s origins are far more humble than this, even though the weighty responsibility of waging the Cold War soon fell on its shoulders. The lack of a political warfare mandate at the CIA’s outset helps to demonstrate two fundamental but largely underestimated aspects of the early Cold War – that the American challenge to Soviet power in this period was often characterised both by bureaucratic disorganisation and strategic incoherence. On an organisational level, disunity undermined the creation of sound and centralised machinery to conduct political warfare operations once this mandate had been authorised in mid-1948. The fragmented bureaucracy exacerbated an even more serious flaw in the US approach to the early Cold War. During the late 1940s and 1950s, American policymakers were unable to devise an effective strategy to harness political warfare to enable the US to successfully prosecute and win the Cold War

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without entering into a direct military conflict with the Soviet Union. Attempts were made to devise an effective Cold War strategy. Most notably George F. Kennan, director of the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff (PPS), worked strenuously in the late 1940s to devise a strategy to defeat the Soviets and roll back communist power and influence to traditional Russian boundaries, without firing a shot. As will be explored in the chapters that follow, Kennan’s strategic ideas hinged on the inauguration of an American political warfare campaign. Over time, the Truman administration authorised the means to wage a Cold War against communists in Western Europe and then against the Soviet bloc itself. By the 1950s this capability was being rolled out on a global scale as the Cold War shifted from the core theatre of Europe to the periphery of the developing world following the Korean War and amidst the forces of nationalisation and decolonisation that were sweeping away the old European empires. Although Washington set up a capability to wage unconventional non-military warfare against communism, this type of subversive activity did not encompass an adequate strategic methodology to fulfil US objectives – undermining Moscow’s power and influence, and liberating the Soviet satellite states from their communist masters. The absence of a political warfare agenda at the CIA’s inception also brings a narrower issue into focus. It is striking that the Agency did not pursue a political warfare capability, but actively resisted such a role under two early Directors of Central Intelligence, Roscoe Hillenkoetter and Walter Bedell Smith. It was only when the wartime political warfare veteran Allen Dulles was appointed Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) in 1953 that the Agency unmistakably embraced its mandate to undertake foreign subversive campaigns around the world as a ‘covert’ arm of US foreign policy. As will be explored, the CIA’s reluctance to engage in these types of ‘dirty tricks’ in the beginning also impacted upon the application and success of later US political warfare operations. By the time Dulles was at the helm, long-standing strategic failings were seriously undermining the viability of the entire programme.

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Perhaps surprisingly, the original development of political warfare was not entwined with the CIA’s origins. The use of political warfare was conceived in the late 1940s by the Departments of State, War and Navy amid concerns about the deteriorating post-war geopolitical situation. Antagonism between Moscow and Washington was of course evident in the immediate aftermath of World War II, but in 1946– 7 the US government had not devised a strategy to fight the Cold War incorporating the CIA and political warfare. In fact the CIA’s creation was completely overshadowed by internecine feuds within the Truman administration’s bureaucracy. For the most part, prior to the CIA’s formal creation under the National Security Act of 1947, senior American policymakers did not conceptualise peacetime foreign policy outside the conventional structures of the diplomatic and military services. Thus little consideration was given to the formulation of plans to wage an offensive political warfare programme abroad. Increasing emphasis was instead given to developing capabilities to meet the Soviet challenge through diplomatic and economic measures and to improving the quality of intelligence on Soviet intentions and capabilities. This book uses the term political warfare (sometimes also referred to in the historiography as covert action or covert operations) based on the official definition in the directive NSC 10/2 that was approved by President Truman in June 1948: [. . .] such operations shall include any covert activities related to: propaganda; economic warfare; preventive direct action, including sabotage, anti-sabotage, demolition and evacuation measures; subversion against hostile states, including assistance to underground resistance movements, guerrillas and refugee liberations [sic] groups, and support of indigenous anticommunist elements in threatened countries of the free world. In the early Cold War, Washington understood political warfare to encompass a wide range of psychological, political, economic and paramilitary methods that could be utilised to counteract communist

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encroachments in Western Europe. Political warfare was a valuable foil to the ‘containment’ strategy in the West. This methodology was also employed to do much more than contain Soviet power in the early Cold War. Washington authorised a new organisation called the Office of Policy Coordination (OPC) within the CIA to launch an offensive campaign of political warfare to destabilise the Soviet bloc and ultimately to try to induce its collapse. The effort was predicated on the condition that activities conducted or directed by the American government would be ‘covert’ to conceal US responsibility for them.7 Senior figures in the Truman administration, led by Secretary of State George Marshall, regarded the ability to ‘plausibly disclaim’ American links to political warfare as a fundamental guideline to avoid ratcheting up Cold War tensions with Stalinist Russia. Avoiding serious antagonism was crucial as the Cold War developed and the Soviet Union acquired a nuclear capability. Even before nuclear parity, the US was determined not to go to war with the Soviet Union over Eastern Europe’s freedom because the region was not deemed to be vital to American national security interests. The ‘plausible denial’ stricture and the decision to avoid war were decisive limiting factors that fundamentally undercut America’s ‘liberation’ campaign against the Soviet bloc. Not only did Truman create a capability with the OPC to wage political warfare in the early Cold War, but after World War II Washington undertook a much broader reorganisation of the entire government apparatus, establishing the national security state. On 26 July 1947, Truman signed into law the National Security Act of 1947. Writing in 1977, Daniel Yergin identified the creation of the US national security state as a seminal moment at the beginning of the Cold War.8 Yergin, and much of the scholarship that has followed, recognised that the full-scale reorganisation of the government apparatus in 1947 marked American attempts to meet the challenges posed in a peacetime environment that was framed by the Cold War. Emphasis was placed on military aspects of the reorganisation, with the unification of the Departments of War and Navy into the National Military Establishment to be headed by a secretary of defense. The reorganisation took place in light of new

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definitions of national security interests that demanded a state of military readiness, as well as American politico-economic initiatives in Western Europe. The National Security Act was also significant for creating the National Security Council and the fledgling peacetime intelligence organisation, the CIA. The NSC was set up to provide a transdepartmental national forum for the president and his senior advisers to consider peacetime national security and foreign policy matters. Meanwhile the CIA’s role was to evaluate and disseminate intelligence centrally from the departmental intelligence agencies to assist the NSC in the formulation of US foreign policy and objectives. The CIA was also quietly given a secret intelligence mandate – to conduct foreign espionage and counter-espionage in order to inform American policymakers about the outside world and potential threats to US national security. Soon the CIA was also tasked with performing far more aggressive and proactive foreign activities. In December 1947, NSC 4-A was approved by Truman, authorising the CIA to wage psychological warfare. This encompassed a covert campaign in Western Europe, beginning in spring 1948, to spread anti-communist propaganda and provide financial assistance to non-communists. Covert American psychological warfare complemented US foreign policy objectives in Western Europe after 1947 by helping to contain the communist menace alongside overt US policy initiatives – the Marshall Plan, the partition of Germany, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), etc. Then in June 1948 the CIA’s psychological warfare mission was vastly expanded through the political warfare mandate. The reassignment had a major impact on the CIA as an institution, shifting its emphasis somewhat away from secret intelligence towards covert operations. The political warfare mandate also had an important bearing on the course of US foreign policy, opening up a new avenue down which the US would attempt to prosecute an aggressive Cold War against the Soviet bloc nations in their own territory and later throughout the world. The inauguration of the national security state did not mark the emergence of a governmental system able to overcome all the

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challenges of the post-war world. This was particularly the case for the US as it struggled to develop a coherent strategy for its policies, its operations, and its national security objectives in the early Cold War. Washington laboured to develop foreign policy on a unified, national basis partly because of entrenched internal divisions within the government bureaucracy.9 Although the drafters of the National Security Act hoped to ameliorate parochial administrative tensions in one organisational sweep, such attitudes proved inherent in the system and persisted long after the passage of legislation in 1947. This book highlights the bureaucratic wrangling that frequently accompanied the CIA on its political warfare journey and the negative impact this had on the execution of the covert campaign as a consequence. The national security state, as it emerged, did not simply constitute a framework of agencies and departments from which methods were decided upon to contain Soviet-directed communism in Europe and the world. From 1948 onwards there was an organisational attempt to create a set of national policies to overcome the challenge posed by Soviet power and influence, to take up and ‘win’ the Cold War. This amounted to more than the development of militarised national security policies designed to establish preponderant American power over the Soviet adversary. It went well beyond the scope of containment in an attempt to meet the challenges posed by Russian power within the Soviet orbit through a range of psychological, political, economic, diplomatic and paramilitary methods. This book illuminates a far more serious flaw beyond systemic disorder in the US approach to the opening years of the Cold War. The reorganisations in 1947– 8 enabled the US to pursue various methods overseas in order to project its power without going to war. But the story of political warfare is not really about the projection of American power, it is about the limitations of American power. After World War II, US influence in Eastern Europe was circumscribed by the entrenchment of predominant Soviet political and military power in the region. In one sense, resorting to political warfare to induce a retraction of Soviet control

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over the Eastern bloc reflected America’s impotence. Washington did not possess – or chose to ignore – more effective alternative policy options and capabilities in the East. In another sense the implementation of the political warfare campaign against the Soviet bloc was extremely problematic. It was undertaken without a clear resolution in Washington of US objectives – whether the US sought to destabilise, overthrow or merely contain Soviet power from a forward position. It is the central contention of this book that disorder prevailed over design on the strategic level of US Cold War policy towards the Soviet bloc. In part, the lack of strategic coherence was caused by the haste in which policies were drawn up, in the atmosphere of crisis that pervaded Washington during the early Cold War. Primarily, however, the failure to clearly define objectives flowed from US reluctance to accept Soviet-communist power in the East after 1945 and a persistent aspiration to overcome that power even though US capabilities could never match that ambition. Political warfare was an isolated capability – an enclave strategy – and it was inadequate to retract Soviet influence from the East without other applications of American power alongside it, in particular diplomatic or military power. This rendered the US strategy on the Soviet bloc completely incoherent. Nevertheless, between 1945 and 1956 the US refused to unequivocally accept that it did not possess the requisite capabilities to realise its loose – but ambitious – policy goals. Strategic confusion was compounded by the absence of an overarching unifying conceptual framework. Washington was not able to develop an overall policy that reconciled its various distinctive policy impulses. A spectrum of policies was pursued, ranging from containment and the development of positions of strength, through Titoism and evolution/gradualism to liberation/rollback. These defensive, moderate and offensive impulses were in a perpetual state of flux, constantly shifting and reacting to internal and external factors. They were also affected by the varying degrees of emphasis apportioned to them by different individuals, offices and departments within the US government. Added to this was the fact that in the realm of covert operations, outside instigators were recruited and

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deployed by the US government, with American officials able to exercise only a minimal level of control over these e´migre´ ‘freedom fighters’. The prevailing dynamic was a swirling cocktail of divergent concepts, interests and forces. It was not possible for a coherent strategy to emerge and take primacy over the multiple policy impulses loosed within and by the US foreign policy establishment. Nevertheless, political warfare operations continued to be undertaken throughout the period in question. It can be argued that these operations served a purpose, because American interference behind the iron curtain preoccupied the Kremlin. The OPC and other US organisations successfully stirred up anti-Soviet and nationalist agitation in the Soviet bloc, although on several occasions when this spilled over into violence in the 1950s there were tragic consequences for pro-Western and anti-Soviet resistance groups. But the OPC’s actions certainly destabilised Soviet control over the region. Overall, however, the US political warfare campaign was a dismal failure because it never came close to achieving the primary objective of liberating the Eastern bloc from Soviet-communist domination. The programme produced a string of disastrous results because it was based on an unfeasible strategy. Only in late 1956, in the aftermath of the doomed Hungarian Revolution, was this point finally and belatedly accepted by Washington. This focus on the strategic implications of the US political warfare programme has an important bearing on the historiography of the early Cold War. This book challenges a prevailing tendency in the scholarship to impart a sense of coherence to American actions against the Soviet Union from the late 1940s onwards. Despite the achievements of Truman’s policy in Western Europe, containment was not successfully rolled out as a global – or even continental – strategy. In fact containment undermined Washington’s aspirations to roll back Soviet power in the East. The more successful containment was at building up the strength of the Western bloc, the more convinced the Kremlin became that it too must build an insurmountable position of strength in the Soviet bloc. Containment provided answers to Washington’s sense of vulnerability in the West, but it simultaneously undermined American aspirations to

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liberate the East. In this sense US policy towards Western Europe was counterproductive because of its broader ramifications. Containment played an important part, indeed it was probably the telling factor, in the acceleration towards the Cold War and its subsequent longevity. This interpretation does not subscribe to the revisionist hypothesis that the US was primarily or solely to blame for causing the Cold War. In the past two decades the historical debates between the orthodox and revisionist camps have moved beyond the narrow practice of what Yergin describes as ‘onus-shifting’.10 For example, as Charles Maier has noted, we can differentiate between on the one hand an acknowledgement that one consequence of the Marshall Plan was to accelerate the bipolar division of Europe, and on the other to conclude that the US was therefore primarily to blame for causing the Cold War. The European Recovery Program (ERP) confirmed rather than caused the schism between the superpowers.11 Narrow orthodox and revisionist arguments have been refuted by the weight of evidence that clearly demonstrates the intrinsic role played by both superpowers in the breakdown of their wartime relationship. However, it can be argued that the US bore considerable responsibility for the freezing of Cold War divisions in the crucial early phases. This was the view of George Kennan, a key American strategist of that period. Kennan, who was also the main architect of the political warfare programme, became disillusioned with US foreign policy by the early 1950s, precisely because he recognised that containment would produce a semi-permanent state of Cold War. Kennan channelled his intellectual energies into devising a strategy to peacefully end the Cold War before US – Soviet hostility became intractable. His efforts were frustrated and he left the State Department a critic of US foreign policy. Even though no successor to Kennan in American policymaking circles was able to design a feasible Soviet bloc strategy in his place, the political warfare programme was retained. There is a vast range of scholarship that has identified the development of the national security state and the strategy of containment to defend American interests in the West at the

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beginning of the Cold War.12 Studies of this period from the perspective of ‘grand strategy’ have incorporated major thematic approaches, producing broad authoritative examinations of the Cold War. But one drawback of this methodology is the tendency to deemphasise the nuances and intricacies of foreign policymaking. It is striking that the vast majority of ‘traditional’ histories of the Cold War minimise or completely ignore Washington’s attempts to challenge communist power behind the iron curtain in the post-war years. Historical focus on grand strategy emphasises broad and distinctive strategies based on clearly defined policy objectives. This does not sit easily with the problematic and ambiguous nature of the American experience in the Soviet bloc in this era. This book modifies the notion of a guiding sense of coherence, sometimes implicit and other times explicit, that has prevailed within the body of ‘grand strategy’ analyses relating to American actions in Europe from the late 1940s onwards. The ‘traditional’ narrative history of this period has also focused on the military and political threat to Western Europe posed by Soviet power in the East.13 While I agree that the American perception of the Soviet threat to Western Europe was a primary motivating factor behind US actions in the West from the late 1940s, nonetheless historians must also fully address the American aspiration to confront Soviet hegemony in the East, and explore the tensions and contradictions that were generated between liberation and containment. US policies were not simply defensive, but at the genesis of the Cold War there was no clear or viable US strategy to ‘win’. This interpretation demonstrates the lack of a long-term ‘master plan’ to wage the Cold War and emerge victorious. It also therefore refutes triumphalist notions of an American ‘victory’ posited in the 1990s as the shockwaves of the Soviet Union’s collapse still reverberated.14 Perhaps more dispassionate and nuanced understandings of the events of the early Cold War are made possible by greater distance from the end of that conflict. In recent years historians have started to forge a broader conception of American actions beyond the containment strategy for Western Europe. This scholarship has moved past the parameters of

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traditional history to chart several underexplored terrains, including the role of intelligence as a component of peacetime foreign policy;15 the place of propaganda, culture and ideology in the Cold War;16 the development of a ‘state – private’ nexus to facilitate a covert offensive against Soviet-communist power.17 This book seeks to build on this scholarship by providing a specialised study of the strategic, organisational and operational features of US foreign policy towards Soviet-communist power and influence in Europe between 1947 and 1956. It sheds new light on the reasons why US strategy towards the Soviet bloc was incoherent, by highlighting the failure to reconcile divergent American objectives and capabilities in Western and Eastern Europe and the impact that this had on the political warfare programme. ***** The CIA and the Soviet Bloc is based on an extensive review of primary and secondary evidence, including archival research at the Truman Presidential Library in Independence, Missouri, and the National Archives at College Park, Maryland. This is supplemented by numerous published collections of primary documentation of the early Cold War, such as the Foreign Relations of the United States and Declassified Documents Reference System collections, as well as official declassified studies that are now available to the historian. Obstacles continue to face and at times frustrate researchers of this era and subject. The biggest challenge in researching this book has been the glaring deficiency of available primary documentation in recording the details of operations conducted by the CIA/OPC. It is not clear whether a body of documentation on political warfare operations from the period exists but remains classified. It is entirely possible that such evidence was destroyed long ago by prudent intelligence practitioners. Unfortunately, from the historian’s perspective, it is even more likely that most of the evidence of the ‘secret’ Cold War was never recorded in written form in the first place. Security considerations and the fact that operations intrinsically involve action rather than written deliberation mean

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that official memoranda detailing the activities of and attitudes within agencies such as the OPC are scarce. This challenge can be overcome to some extent by supplementing official records with the valuable reservoir of internal government memoranda, as well as the oral histories and recollections of the protagonists. These latter accounts are collected in the archives as well as in numerous autobiographies and secondary studies. While a sense of balance dictates against an over-reliance on first-person recollections, biographies and oral histories have added valuable insight and colour to this study, helping to fill in some of the gaps left by the official primary evidence.

CHAPTER 1 HOLDING THE LINE: ERP, THE COMMUNIST CHALLENGE AND THE BUREAUCRATIC STRUGGLE OVER PSYCHOLOGICAL WARFARE, JULY—DECEMBER 1947

The creation of the national security state in July 1947 ostensibly reorganised the machinery of the US government to allow it to meet the difficult challenges of the post-war world. When the National Security Act of 1947 was passed, the perceived threat posed by the Soviet Union was clearly emerging as the primary concern for American policymakers. At the time of the reorganisation, however, the Truman administration’s national security policy was largely undefined and embryonic. The planning of a grand strategy for Western Europe was initiated during 1947 based on American contributions to its economic recovery and political stabilisation through the launch of the European Recovery Program. It was unclear where this would leave American policies and objectives for the eastern part of the continent, especially as the states of Eastern Europe and Soviet Russia were expected to reject the American aid proposal.

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Despite the soundness of Washington’s strategy for Western Europe, it was to a large extent prisoner to external factors in the East. Although ERP planners anticipated a backlash from Moscow in the wake of the announcement of the Marshall Plan, the scale of the reaction caught Washington on the back foot. US policy and the machinery to implement it were compelled to catch up with the fluid situation on the ground in Europe. As a result, a long interim period prior to congressional ratification of the Marshall Plan placed US interests in Western Europe in jeopardy. Before ERP could be implemented, pro-Western groups came under subversive political attack from indigenous communist forces organised and supported by Moscow to oppose the Marshall Plan. This ushered in a period of crisis management in Washington. Cold War antagonisms now unmistakably posed the salient threat to vital American interests in the West. The emergency aid extended to Greece and Turkey under the Truman Doctrine was just the phony war. France, Italy, Germany and Great Britain all appeared vulnerable, to varying degrees, to the advances and subversive practices of communist political ideology. Washington officials at the highest levels responded by calling for the development of countermeasures against the communist threat to Western Europe. This was a defensive counter-response that did not yet look towards undermining communist regimes in Eastern Europe, but simply at holding the line in the West. Tactically, US countermeasures functioned as a double-edged sword. They would shore up the morale and resources of the noncommunist political, cultural and labour organisations in affected countries. Simultaneously, the communist Left would be undermined and discredited at every available opportunity. To do this it was decided that American intervention in Western Europe should be hidden in order to minimise any grounds for communist propaganda attacks against the US. The tactic of covert ‘psychological warfare’ was thereby settled upon, based predominantly on the secret disbursement of anti-communist propaganda and funding to proWestern groups.

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However, Washington could not immediately launch its psychological warfare campaign because the machinery and legal basis to do so were not yet in place. The Central Intelligence Agency, statutorily founded in July 1947 under the National Security Act, was the preferred organisation to undertake the campaign. Its adaptability and loose legislative mandate would allow it to incorporate a psychological warfare capability. But despite the perceived need to act swiftly to alleviate the grave political threat faced by America’s allies in Europe, Washington became bogged down in a bureaucratic quagmire as it attempted to organise its peacetime psychological warfare capability. The need for quick action was first identified in late summer, but it was not until midDecember that the National Security Council eventually adopted a compromise directive, NSC 4-A, which formally authorised peacetime psychological warfare operations abroad. In the meantime, diplomats and intelligence officers on the ground attempted to fill the operational vacuum resulting from the bureaucratic struggle in Washington through off-the-cuff attempts to support pro-Western groups and discredit communist sympathisers and organisations. The purpose behind the long-anticipated directive NSC 4-A was to resolve the bureaucratic conflict over the organisation and control of the psychological warfare campaign. It actually had the opposite effect. Because NSC 4-A was the product of compromise, residual dissatisfaction with it meant that the directive marked the beginning of the turf war that it was supposed to end. In the immediate term, the consequences of this were not too serious. Bureaucratic wrangling in Washington held up the CIA’s formal intervention in Europe to the detriment of Western confidence in the interim period, but ad hoc measures by US representatives in the field were a sufficient stopgap. Moreover, once the CIA was authorised to act, its objectives were clearly defined and matched its capabilities. Therefore, when it finally received its sanction to intervene in Western Europe, it was able to do so fairly effectively. The opening-up of bureaucratic divisions in Washington held far more serious ramifications in the longer term. The conflict at the heart of NSC 4-A persisted long after December 1947. Bureaucratic

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disorder undercut the effective organisation and implementation of a broader political warfare programme towards the Soviet bloc later on. Organisational disunity also exacerbated the serious strategic flaws at the heart of US policy, significantly undermining American approaches to the Cold War in the coming months and years.

The onset of the Cold War US policymakers did not call for the inauguration of a foreign political warfare programme prior to the creation of the national security state. But long before this point senior officials in the Truman administration began to raise concerns about the emerging post-war threat posed by expanding Russian power. Over time, a consensus formed in Washington regarding the inherent expansionism within Marxist– Leninist politico-ideological doctrine, as well as the military threat posed by Soviet power. As American anxiety grew it stimulated demands for a greater quantity and quality of intelligence on Soviet intentions and capabilities. The most important early analysis of the Soviet threat was the Clifford – Elsey Report, which was submitted to Truman in September 1946. Its authors declared the urgent need for better information on the Kremlin, stating that: ‘our suspicion of the Soviet Union – and suspicion is the first step to fear – is growing. Suspicious misunderstanding of the Soviet Union must be replaced by an accurate knowledge of the motives and methods of the Soviet Government.’1 The Central Intelligence Group was alerted to the ‘urgent need to develop the highest possible quality of intelligence on the U.S.S.R. in the shortest possible time’. To facilitate this, an interdepartmental ‘Planning Committee’ was established to draw up ‘a plan to coordinate and improve the production of intelligence on the U.S.S.R.’.2 The CIG organised itself to take a more active interest in the Soviet Union. In the spring of 1946 the Special Projects Division for the Soviet Union was created under Harry Rositzke. This formed the basis of the Soviet Operating Division within the CIG/CIA’s Office of Special Operations (OSO) in 1947. The increasingly suspicious tone of CIG analyses of Soviet

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intentions contributed to the general crescendo of anti-Soviet feeling in Washington.3 However, efforts to establish contacts with antiSoviet resistance groups in Finland, the Baltic and Poland were at this stage isolated secret intelligence missions rather than offensive rollback operations.4 George Kennan, the State Department’s Russian specialist who later played a central role in the development of a peacetime political warfare programme, was in a position to influence the alarmist antiSoviet tone of CIG reports. He was recruited by the CIG as a ‘Special Consultant to the Director of Central Intelligence’. DCI Hoyt S. Vandenberg was an enthusiastic recipient of Kennan’s papers and placed considerable importance on his soundings, based on his estimable record of diplomatic service within Russia and the Baltic states.5 Kennan famously articulated his anxieties about Stalinist Russia in the Long Telegram dispatched from the American Embassy in Moscow in February 1946. Kennan did not regard Soviet military expansion as the primary threat to US interests in Western Europe.6 Instead he identified the ideological – political threat on the ‘subterranean plane of actions undertaken by agencies for which Soviet Government does not admit responsibility’ as being particularly hazardous to US interests.7 Kennan’s alarm at the Soviet politico– ideological threat reverberated around Washington. However, his CIG consultancy work did not go beyond informing its Russian intelligence reports. In 1946 Kennan had not yet called for a US political warfare programme, believing that the priority at this stage was to prevent the rise of communist influence in Western Europe.8 It was not until September 1946 that a distinctive shift was made towards the Cold War. The US government undertook its first major Cold War policy brainstorm when Truman asked two aides, Clark Clifford and George Elsey, to seek out the opinions of Washington’s top brass regarding Soviet policies and intentions. The opening lines of the resulting Clifford –Elsey Report were stark: The gravest problem facing the United States today is that of American relations with the Soviet Union. The solution of that problem may determine whether or not there will be a third

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World War. Soviet leaders appear to be conducting their nation on a course of aggrandizement designed to lead to eventual world domination by the U.S.S.R. Their goal, and their policies designed to reach it, are in direct conflict with American ideals [. . .] Having canvassed Truman’s cabinet, the Clifford – Elsey Report demonstrated an emerging consensus gravitating towards Kennan’s alarmist views. Truman’s senior officials felt that US policy should ‘resist vigorously and successfully any efforts of the U.S.S.R. to expand into areas vital to American security’. Like Kennan’s musings, this did not move conceptualisations of American policy beyond an early expression of ‘containment’ in Western Europe. The Clifford – Elsey Report did not call for offensive political warfare measures to undermine communist power within the Soviet bloc. This type of action had not yet entered official thinking.9 During 1946 American officials became progressively more concerned that Soviet foreign and military policy was essentially expansionist and might therefore look to the territorial conquest of Western Europe and beyond.10 The US military was the first group to express an interest in political warfare stemming from this anxiety about Soviet military aggression, which was stimulated by the crises over Iran and Turkey in 1946. For instance, in July 1946 the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) asked the OSO to contact what was believed to be a large underground body of anti-Soviet resistance in Romania that would be capable of hindering Soviet supply lines in the event of war.11 This proposal was strictly tied into the earliest phases of contingency war-planning at the beginning of the Cold War. Meanwhile most of the OSO’s focus was on running secret intelligence networks in Europe and the Near East.12 The psychological warfare surveys initiated within military circles in 1946 were limited to the preparation of plans and studies for use ‘in time of war or threat of war as determined by the President’.13 Early reports within the State-War-Navy Coordinating Committee (SWNCC) 304 series were narrow in scope and generally were not linked to the infant CIG.14 The planning of peacetime measures as

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actions short of war did not begin in the State Department until late 1947, and this was conducted in complete independence of the military-initiated war-preparation analyses.15 Despite the military’s head start, it was State Department proposals leading to the adoption of NSC 4-A and NSC 10/2 that later harnessed the CIA to a covert programme of psychological– political warfare against communist influence overseas.16

The Marshall Plan and Cominform In July 1947, just as Truman was signing the National Security Act into law, European statesmen met in Paris to discuss Secretary of State George Marshall’s proposal to inject American aid into their ailing economies.17 The embryonic ERP heralded a shift in US policy of far greater significance than the Truman Doctrine. The announcement of the ERP demonstrated Washington’s firm commitment to the preservation of friendly governments in Western Europe and duly became the cornerstone of its containment policy. ERP drew a politico-economic line in the sand across Europe, demarcating America’s vital interests to the Soviet Union. The Marshall Plan’s impact was not only symbolic, it also provided American policymakers with the basis of a viable practical strategy to build up Western Europe on American terms. The announcement of the ERP was a watershed moment. It propelled the US and the Soviet Union towards Cold War antagonism. Although the majority of American planners regarded the ERP mainly in defensive terms, Moscow viewed it with great alarm as a supreme threat to its security. For this reason, Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov rejected Soviet participation in the ERP at the Paris conference in early July. The Soviet rejection of the ERP laid to rest any lingering hopes of a peacetime modus vivendi. The Kremlin quickly rallied the reluctant Eastern European regimes to rebuff the American aid programme. Moscow also resolved that the ERP must be undermined in participating countries in Western Europe by all available means short of war. At the same time, Russian predominance would have to be consolidated in the East to shore off

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that region against the perceived threat of Western encroachment. Any modicum of wartime cooperation with the West was now abandoned. The protective ring of Eastern European buffer states was rapidly brought under the firm grip of Soviet control. The consolidation of Moscow’s control over the Soviet bloc raised profound questions about how American foreign policy should respond. However, during the autumn and winter of 1947, American priorities lay elsewhere. Nine long months would pass before Congress finally approved the Foreign Assistance Act on 3 April 1948, releasing ERP funds allowing the programme to be implemented. In the intervening period before the Marshall Plan’s implementation, Western Europe was acutely vulnerable to communist subversion. Several influential State Department policymakers, including George Kennan and Charles Bohlen, correctly anticipated that the Soviets would snub the ERP because of the intrusive terms of participation attached to it. It was hoped that this rejection would undercut Moscow’s ability to hinder the project’s development and implementation.18 Russia’s exclusion raised the dual prospects of strengthening American allies and simultaneously staving off communist political advances in Western Europe. The overriding belief among senior Washington officials at this juncture was that Soviet-directed communism posed a direct threat to the West.19 In mid-1947 this ‘came primarily from political intrigues and subversion’ aimed at exploiting the economic disarray in wardevastated Western Europe.20 Local communist parties in Italy, France, Germany and Great Britain threatened to take power or increase their political sway by legal means. For Truman officials, the salient principle behind any American intervention was that ‘the approach to the political problem for the moment must be economic’.21 The priority was to ensure that the US must ‘run the show’ by carefully controlling the political environment where Marshall aid would be sent.22 Washington also hoped to avoid assuming responsibility for dividing Europe by addressing the ERP to both Western and Eastern Europe.23 As Maier explains, the ‘political brilliance’ of the American initiative ‘was that

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it forced the onus of any division onto Moscow’.24 Rejection of the proposal by communist regimes would appear to the outside world to be of their own doing, rather than the result of intrusive American conditions of participation. However, although Washington successfully shifted the burden of responsibility for dividing Europe onto Moscow, this only scored short-term propaganda points. Of much greater importance was the long-lasting political impact of the division of Europe. The ERP was hugely successful in rehabilitating the West over the next few years, but this accomplishment was counterbalanced by the negative impact that the Marshall Plan had on US– Soviet relations and its contribution to the deterioration and perpetuation of the Cold War. The Marshall Plan was designed primarily as a defensive initiative to build up an American position of strength in the West. But Moscow gave far greater recognition to its secondary purpose as a ploy to undermine Soviet influence in Western Europe. Although Soviet strength was predominant in the East, communism enjoyed considerable grass-roots popularity in the West after World War II. Russian exclusion from Western Europe through the ERP therefore represented a significant setback to Soviet foreign policy. Furthermore, just as Soviet domination of Eastern Europe fuelled a sense of American insecurity in Western Europe, US politico-economic dominance in the West now enhanced the Soviet sense of vulnerability in the East. Kennan, Bohlen, Will Clayton and the other American planners failed to foresee that a Russian rejection of the ERP would cause at least as much trouble as would its participation. Moscow’s response to the ERP was swift and was designed to operate on two planes. The Kremlin decisively affirmed its political and economic control over the Eastern European communist regimes. It also went on the counter-attack and began to organise resistance to the Marshall Plan through indigenous communist groups in the participating Western European countries. It is important to note that the Marshall Plan was not the cause of Cold War antagonisms in Europe. It nonetheless fundamentally accelerated the breakdown of US –Soviet relations. The communist

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grip on Eastern Europe was tightening before Molotov’s rejection of the ERP in Paris. Mass arrests of opposition figures and repressive censorship of the media in Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria went unaffected by American protestations long before the ERP was announced. The lack of US influence was signalled by Washington’s willingness to ratify peace treaties with the offending communist regimes in 1947, even though these governments failed to adhere to the American interpretation of the Yalta agreements to administer open democratic political processes after the war. The development of an American strategy to prevent communist domination over Eastern Europe was therefore problematic before the Soviet rejection of the Marshall Plan. Frustrated members of the State Department bemoaned American geopolitical impotence in the region. The American Minister in Hungary, Selden Chapin, warned Secretary Marshall on 22 July 1947 that ‘unless something positive is done immediately, all hope of saving Hungary for the constructive part which it might play in a stabilized democratic Europe needs must be abandoned, barring unforeseen miracles’. Chapin’s view was supported by the Director of the Office of European Affairs, H. Freeman Matthews, who informed Marshall on 1 July that ‘Hungarian developments have precipitated a situation clearly posing the question whether there are effective means, short of war, by which Soviet aggression through infiltration can be successfully combated by the forces of democracy’.25 Chapin and Matthews were also invoking a broader point beyond the specific political climate in Hungary. Soviet and communist transgressions in the East pressed home the need to develop and implement a coherent US strategic approach for the continent as a whole if the division of Europe was to be avoided. Instead, Washington chose the ‘safer’ option by committing American energies unilaterally to Western Europe through the ERP, where it exerted primary influence and where its vital interests were. This decision brushed aside the question of a pan-continental approach. Although the ERP’s architects extensively considered the strategic fallout from a Soviet rejection of the ERP, they failed to fully grasp that the key pillars of the project would now be vigorously

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challenged by communist groups in Western Europe. Moscow acted swiftly, mobilising the communist parties from Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Poland, France, Czechoslovakia and Italy into the Communist Information Bureau (Cominform) at its inaugural meeting at Wilizia Gova in Poland on 22– 23 September 1947. The Cominform’s key purpose was to coordinate legal and extralegal opposition to the US aid programme, primarily through orchestrating a wave of demonstrations and strikes in Western Europe through the local communist parties and trade unions.26 The Soviet counter-response to the ERP through the establishment of the Cominform was the decisive factor in the inauguration of a parallel US psychological– political warfare programme. According to Eisenberg, the creation of the Cominform was the ‘watershed moment’ in post-war Europe. Not only did it increase the American sense of vulnerability in France and Italy, it also impacted on US policy towards Germany, influencing the shift away from negotiated deals with Moscow on German unification at the upcoming London Council of Foreign Ministers meeting.27 In the coming years the scope and character of American political warfare evolved, but initially it was borne out of the need to protect pro-US groups in Western Europe. The Cominform’s organised counter-attack exposed the ERP’s soft underbelly. Of greatest concern was the mobilisation of political activists within the French and Italian communist parties, who were all the more inclined to resort to extra-legal action once communist politicians had been excluded from government cabinet posts at American behest, following the initial ERP discussions in mid-1947. This alienated local communist parties from the political mainstream in Western Europe, pushing them closer to Stalinist Russia and providing greater incentive to act out of ideological rather than national interests.28 The creation of the Cominform produced an intensification of hostile anti-American propaganda, increases in covert Soviet funding to communist organisations in Western Europe, and a surge in subversive political activities. This played out through grass-roots violence, intimidation and strike action that threatened to cripple the already debilitated post-war economies in France and Italy

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in particular, and to bring down their centre-right governments. By early autumn, the abiding fear in Washington was not of a communist coup in Czechoslovakia or escalating oppression elsewhere in Eastern Europe, the main concern was that France and Italy might fall under the sway of communist regimes before ERP aid reached these Western countries. This would be a massive blow to American prestige and it could shatter the confidence of other noncommunist governments in Western Europe. Most importantly, it would jeopardise the entire ERP initiative. Congressional ratification was based on the participation of Western Europe’s most powerful nations. The aid programme also required effective cooperation between all the Western European economies. American officials soon realised the precariousness of the entire ERP undertaking, and by extension the future political and economic stability of Western Europe, in light of the Soviet-communist counter-attack. Washington also recognised that it possessed inadequate capabilities to respond to events on the ground in the participating Western European nations. Prior to the arrival of ERP aid and its management by the Economic Cooperation Administration (ECA), the US lacked the machinery to protect and advance the flagship aid programme, even though it underpinned the entire American strategic approach to Europe. The Truman administration therefore looked towards two forms of intervention – one overt, the other clandestine – to protect its position in Western Europe. Overt measures were undertaken, such as the provision of interim aid, food shipments and the intensification of an official US information programme. It was hoped that highly visible donations of economic aid could stave off communist pressures through the difficult winter period. In late September the Truman administration requested emergency funds for an interim aid package from Congress to prop up the beleaguered French and Italian economies. The State Department feared that without provisional assistance the fragile economies would collapse, leaving a political vacuum that could be filled by communists.29

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Gradually US officials recognised that overt assistance would need to be supplemented with clandestine measures. Initially the covert psychological warfare programme that was adopted ranged from the production and dissemination of pro-Western and anti-communist propaganda to clandestine funding of non-communist political, social and labour organisations. Two primary aims underpinned the hidden American intervention. First, subversive activities by indigenous communists would be challenged and counteracted. Second, the populations of Western Europe needed to be convinced about the propriety of the Marshall Plan, that it was not – as communist propaganda claimed – an American pretext to control the Western European economies. Washington supplemented official broadcasts by the State Department’s radio outlet Voice of America by covertly organising friendly Western elements to promulgate America’s benevolent intentions through local media organisations.30

The long march to psychological warfare begins The Truman administration’s launch of a peacetime psychological warfare campaign originated with the first US Secretary of Defense James Forrestal, who had been worried about political instability in France and Italy since as early as June 1947. At that time Forrestal had asked Truman during a cabinet luncheon how the US would respond to Russian-sponsored communist coups in these countries, to which Truman had no answer.31 By late summer the problem of political instability in Western Europe had become a widespread concern inside the Truman administration. Bohlen informed Under Secretary of State Robert Lovett that the ‘necessity’ to ‘devise some instrumentality to combat this [communist] penetration on its own grounds’ in Western Europe was being ‘frequently’ discussed within the department. These concerns were echoed by the first two intelligence estimates produced by the newly established CIA in September and November 1947. Agency analysts argued that although open military aggression by the Soviet Union against the West remained highly unlikely, Moscow was now deliberately

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conducting political, economic and psychological warfare against American interests in Western Europe.32 The primary mechanism originally favoured by Forrestal, Lovett, Truman’s Chief of Staff William Leahy and others to offset communist agitation was to secretly fund anti-communist political and labour groups.33 According to Bohlen, the sticking point to initiating this device ‘has always been to obtain such secret funds from Congress’.34 But the debate was moved forward by an even more extreme proposal. Forrestal was contacted by George Kennan from the State Department in September 1947 with a proposal to create a ‘guerrilla warfare corps’ and training school within the military establishment. Kennan argued that the administration must ‘face the fact’ that Moscow was advancing ‘in many areas’ by ‘irregular and underground methods’. Kennan contended that ‘it might be essential to our security that we fight fire with fire’, and accordingly he attached a proposal prepared by two OSS veterans, Franklin Lindsay and Charles Thayer, for a programme of ‘secret warfare’ against the Soviet Union.35 Forrestal attempted to address the question of countermeasures and the requisite machinery to handle the task in one fell swoop. The Secretary of Defense turned to the fledgling CIA to see whether it could access the unvouchered funds that Bohlen and others argued would be necessary for this type of operation. Echoing Kennan’s concerns, Forrestal stressed to DCI Hillenkoetter that ‘We’ve got to do something to stop the Russians and their rapid spread around the world. Secretary Marshall in the State Department doesn’t want State to do it, and I think he’s right. The military can’t do it. Could you take it on?’36 Notwithstanding the Lindsay – Thayer proposal, these first covert measures were needed to control the perceived political crisis in Western Europe as an interim effort to complement ‘containment’ in the West. Former Agency officials, such as Harry Rositzke and Ray Cline, assert that these earliest forms of political warfare were ‘strictly benign’ and solely ‘designed to strengthen the European political structure’.37 The priority at this time was not to turn these clandestine capabilities towards the East and launch a more offensive

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campaign against the Soviet bloc itself, but to address the faltering political constitution of the Western European nations. Forrestal’s idea to turn to the CIA to undertake covert political activities was logical.38 The CIA was more capable in this delicate field than other agencies, thanks to its institutional evolution and its vague mandate under the National Security Act. The jewel in the crown was the Agency’s ability to expend unvouchered funds, the ‘heart and soul’ of covert operations.39 The CIA’s unfettered access to unvouchered funds allowed its operations to evade normal accounting procedures by the executive and legislative branches. Therefore the Agency could cast a cloak of secrecy over politically sensitive activities when the expenditure of other government organisations was liable to rigorous oversight. There were also operational advantages to using the CIA. The Agency already ran secret intelligence networks in Europe, inherited from the Strategic Services Unit and the CIG, and had preserved a nucleus of psychological and political warfare expertise from OSS. This provided a base from which to launch psychological and political warfare operations.40 Despite these organisational advantages, Forrestal’s request for the CIA to launch a psychological warfare campaign in Western Europe immediately hit a snag. The scope of activities under consideration ranged from covert financial support to the propagation of ‘black’ propaganda. Vandenberg’s successor as Director of Central Intelligence, Roscoe Hillenkoetter, objected to the CIA taking operational responsibility for such activities, fearing that these operations would jeopardise the Agency’s primary mission, recently enshrined by Congress, to collect secret intelligence. Hillenkoetter turned to his legal counsel Lawrence Houston for advice after receiving Forrestal’s proposition. Houston responded on 25 September and agreed that the CIA should not take responsibility for the peacetime psychological warfare programme. Houston’s legal advice therefore stalled the push for covert intervention in Western Europe. Although a ‘review of the National Security Act reveals two provisions which might be construed as authority for CIA to engage in black propaganda’ or ‘S.O. [special operations]’, it was Houston’s opinion that ‘either activity would be an unwarranted extension of

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the functions authorized’ in the catch-all provisions of the legislation. Houston and Hillenkoetter knew that Congress intended the flexible mandate and unvouchered funding granted by Sections 102 (d) (4) and (5) of the National Security Act to relate to secret intelligence and counter-intelligence. Houston therefore rejected Forrestal’s suggestion on the basis that he did not believe ‘there was any thought in the minds of Congress that the Central Intelligence Agency under this authority would take positive action for subversion and sabotage’. To bolster the Agency’s refutation of its responsibility for covert psychological– political warfare activities, Houston concluded that the authority to place such operations within the CIA was not vested in the executive but in the legislative branch. Neither psychological nor political warfare, he declared, ‘should be undertaken by CIA without previously informing Congress and obtaining its approval of the functions and the expenditure of funds for those purposes’.41 Houston therefore based his rejection of the Agency’s legal authority to conduct psychological– political warfare on the congressional intent behind the CIA’s legislative mandate. He did, however, add a caveat that suggested a way to overcome this obstacle: ‘If the President or the National Security Council directs us to do a certain action, and the Congress funds it, you’ve got no problem. Who is there left to object?’42 Hillenkoetter’s opposition to taking on psychological warfare was not so much based on legal considerations but on protecting the reputation and operation of his organisation. Despite their differing reasons, Hillenkoetter and Houston concurred that the CIA should not engage in these activities. Therefore they initially fended off Forrestal’s approaches. But these rebuttals eventually proved inadequate once the NSC decided that the US must urgently counteract the threat from the extreme Left in Europe.

The convergence of the SANACC and peacetime psychological warfare By September 1947 the Truman administration was holding highlevel discussions about the urgent need to intervene covertly in

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Western Europe to counteract communist subversion there. The first conversations were conducted in the social networks of Washington’s political elite. However, these talks did not immediately filter down to the working-level staffs of the various departments and agencies, thus delaying the initiation of detailed operational planning. CIA and State Department papers produced in September 1947 reflected this hiatus, failing to link Italian political and economic vulnerability to the initiation of peacetime psychological warfare countermeasures.43 At the NSC’s first meeting on 26 September it was Under Secretary of State Lovett, rather than Forrestal, who took the lead on addressing Italian vulnerability. In so doing, Lovett was following up the views expressed at a Policy Planning Staff meeting held the previous day.44 The PPS discussion centred on the renewed communist pressure being applied by parliamentary means on Alcide De Gasperi’s conservative government, as well as the possible communist seizure of northern Italy after the Allied troops’ withdrawal that was due to occur in December.45 The PPS, Lovett and the first CIA world review paper circulated at the NSC meeting all identified the grave danger of economic collapse and ensuing political instability facing Italy at this time.46 Communism was not blamed as the source of the Italian crisis, but it was identified as the key threat that could exacerbate and exploit present economic difficulties. The NSC members unanimously agreed that the greatest threat to US interests in Italy was that economic collapse would bring the Italian Communist Party to power. But there was as yet no call to launch a psychological campaign to assist De Gasperi’s pro-American government in Rome, given that Houston’s legal advice rejecting CIA involvement had been tendered just one day before. The interest in a peacetime psychological warfare campaign now converged with ongoing interdepartmental discussions regarding planning for a wartime organisation. On 24 September, the day before Houston rejected Forrestal’s approach, Hillenkoetter sent a memorandum to Sidney Souers, now NSC executive secretary, concerning the SWNCC study on the wartime planning and

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employment of psychological warfare. Hillenkoetter recommended that the NSC take ‘immediate steps’ to establish a ‘central organisation’ to conduct ‘vitally needed psychological operations’ as a result of the Soviet-directed communist threat in Western Europe.47 Hillenkoetter wanted to divert responsibility for all psychological warfare programmes away from the Agency by suggesting that a new central agency should manage psychological warfare. Hillenkoetter’s recommendations pre-empted the release of SWNCC 304/6 by the reconstituted State-Army-Navy-Air Force Coordinating Committee (SANACC) subcommittee on Special Studies and Evaluation (SSE) six days after Hillenkoetter’s interjection. SWNCC 304/6 failed to resolve the problematic question of where to assign responsibility for wartime psychological warfare, deferring a decision until the dust had settled from the bureaucratic shake-up following passage of the National Security Act. For the moment, the SSE subcommittee tentatively proposed that an interdepartmental policy and planning board should be set up under a director of psychological warfare.48 The SSE subcommittee continued to restrict itself to exploring the inauguration of psychological warfare solely in times of war or ‘threat of war’, although a special study of ‘White’ programmes as well as ‘Black’ propaganda, sabotage, conspiracy and subversion was also undertaken by a SANACC subcommittee.49 In contrast, Hillenkoetter suggested that the SANACC-proposed psychological warfare organisation should be linked to the Forrestal-led discussions and that a new agency also should be set up to conduct peacetime operations. In the current climate of increasing Soviet-phobia, this could be done seamlessly without having to contravene the SANACC’s original charter. Even though the US was not at war with the Soviet Union, a strong case could now be made that it was under the ‘threat of war’ due to heightened tensions and suspicions. This arrangement would buttress Hillenkoetter’s agenda to channel responsibility for psychological warfare away from the CIA. The DCI therefore emphasised his preference that the new Psychological Warfare Agency should be made accountable to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, indicating that the CIA had no desire to get involved.50

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In early October 1947 Washington received a jolt that propelled the psychological warfare debate into the foreground and entwined the divergent strands of wartime and peacetime planning. During the first week of October, the Truman administration became aware of the inaugural meeting of the Cominform that had convened in Poland two weeks earlier. Although communist agitation had intensified in France, Italy and Eastern Europe since midsummer, the reconstitution of the Communist International (Comintern) heralded a concerted new effort by Moscow to oppose American policies in Western Europe. The launch of the Cominform sparked a flurry of government communications evaluating its significance. Many of the American Embassies in Europe commented on the aggressive portents of this latest Soviet move.51 At the US Embassy in Paris, Ambassador Caffery tried to ensure that Italian considerations did not overshadow the communist threat that he perceived to France, sending a stream of cables to Marshall in the weeks after the Cominform’s existence had been uncovered.52 In the State Department, Kennan warned Lovett that the launch of the Cominform and the anti-US propaganda campaign amounted to a Soviet ‘squeeze play’, that this was a lastditch attempt to defeat the ERP.53 Bohlen agreed with Kennan, warning that Moscow now regarded France and Italy as the ‘chief battleground’ from which to fight the Marshall Plan.54 Indeed, these analyses put forward by Kennan and Bohlen were accurate. After some initial interest in the ERP, the Soviets soon came to regard it as an attempt to undermine Soviet influence in Central and Eastern Europe. As a direct result of this perception of the threat posed by the ERP to Soviet interests in Europe, Stalin now hurriedly rejuvenated the Cominterm. According to the first item on the agenda of the inaugural meeting of the Cominform, its central objective was to mobilise ‘the struggle against attempts by American imperialism to enslave economically the countries of Europe (“Marshall Plan”)’.55 CIA analysts believed that the mobilisation of the Cominform signalled a shift in Soviet tactics that would necessitate an American counter-response. A CIA estimate released on 13 October warned

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that it suggested an adjustment from the preferred Soviet strategy of parliamentary action to subversive, extra-legal measures in Western Europe. It was emphasised that the principal threat to France and Italy was covert and political, rather than military. Moscow was resorting to subversion rather than conventional military tactics to further its interests. Although this judgement sounded dire, CIA analysis qualified the threat posed by Western-based communist groups by noting that the reversion to subversive tactics would undermine the parliamentary success of the French and Italian communist parties. Their credibility as nationalist organisations would be compromised by their close association with the overbearing Soviets.56 This would prove irrelevant, however, if as the CIA believed, Moscow had instructed French and Italian communists to abandon any hope of a parliamentary route to power. Both parties had now been excluded from their governments and the CIA guessed that the Kremlin therefore wanted them to adopt far more radical and aggressive measures to increase their influence.57

Interim measures and the bureaucratic quagmire Numerous assessments came out of Washington concluding that there were plans in exsistence primarily designed to undermine ERP before its congressional ratification and implementation in Western Europe. This message concentrated American minds. Although the parliamentary threat posed by the French and Italian communist parties was not entirely discounted, it was now widely assumed that Western European communists had shifted from an overt political and legal agenda to an underground, subversive and revolutionary campaign.58 The overwhelming opinion was that an American counter-offensive was urgently required. However, although there was clear recognition of the pressing strategic need to sanction peacetime psychological warfare operations, the launch of the campaign was completely undercut by divisive bureaucratic friction. Administrative wrangling in Washington now held up the organisation of psychological warfare machinery for several more months.

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During the long wait for formal NSC authorisation of the covert programme, US diplomatic and military representatives in Western Europe, including Ambassador Caffery in Paris and Ambassador Dunn in Rome, vociferously campaigned in public and behind the scenes in support of American and local non-communist interests.59 Small-scale efforts to influence the political direction of Western Europe behind the scenes dated back to 1946. At that time the Strategic Services Unit’s James Angleton had secretly funded De Gasperi’s Christian Democrats in the build-up to the June 1946 Italian referendum on Italy’s future political system. Angleton also allegedly established and financed pro-Western newspapers in Italy during this period, although he later denied this claim.60 The US government had also attempted to influence the political outcome of the French and Italian elections in spring 1946 by exploiting its economic leverage over their populations with the extension of welltimed emergency loans.61 Secret support and channelling of American funds to the non-communist labour unions in France and Italy now commenced in the autumn and winter of 1947, thanks in large part to the tireless efforts of Jay Lovestone of the American Federation of Labor and Irving Brown of the Congress of Industrial Organizations.62 Activities were not restricted to France and Italy. For instance, Melvin Lasky also attempted to promote pro-American opinion in Germany from late 1947, especially among the German intelligentsia. Lasky was aided in this task by Michael Josselson, a member of the Information Control Division (ICD) of the Office of Military Government, United States. In October 1947, following the Soviet rejection of ERP and the establishment of the Cominform, General Lucius Clay instructed the ICD to promote Western values in Germany in order to counteract the increasingly virulent antiAmerican Soviet propaganda.63 In Washington authorising an organised counter-offensive took far longer. The process began when the SANACC requested the expansion of the scope of its study to include recommendations on peacetime psychological warfare as a result of the commotion sparked by the launch of the Cominform. This request was promptly granted, reflecting the widespread concerns in American circles over the

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danger posed to Western Europe. The SANACC’s representatives agreed with the groundswell of opinion that peacetime measures were required ‘as a matter of urgency’ to counteract the increasing militancy of the communist Left.64 The SANACC examination of peacetime psychological warfare was a golden opportunity to establish the new capability on a coordinated interdepartmental basis, transcending the parochial interests of individual departments and agencies. Instead the issue became bottlenecked in the bureaucracy, because the various protagonists gravitated towards the narrower concerns of their individual institutions. The SANACC discussions generated interdepartmental tension instead of resolving it, slowing down a final decision on the organisation of peacetime psychological warfare. A process of bureaucratic attrition was set in motion in which, ultimately, the weakest actor would be compelled to take on operational responsibility for the campaign. It was inevitable, in other words, that by the winter of 1947 Hillenkoetter would be fighting a losing battle. ‘I shall admit,’ he remarked in 1952, that ‘there could not be a great deal of opposition when one’s bosses, in this case NSC, were insistent upon setting it up.’65 The SANACC issued a new report on 3 November that decried Washington’s inability to counteract the ‘all-out propaganda campaign’ being waged ‘primarily against the United States’ by the Soviet Union. SANACC 304/10 warned that the threat was most serious as Soviet actions were ‘designed to weaken and divide foreign opinion to a point where effective opposition to Soviet aspirations is no longer attainable by political, economic or military means’. This could undermine the entire basis of the American agenda under the ERP in Western Europe, so the SANACC again recommended the organisation of a psychological warfare counterattack.66 But the SANACC did not settle the various differences of opinion over the organisation of peacetime psychological warfare. Hillenkoetter and Deputy DCI Edwin Wright approved the SANACC’s recommendation to establish a separate Psychological Warfare Agency in order to safeguard the Agency’s secret intelligence

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mission, but NSC Executive Secretary James Lay advised Souers to reject SANACC 304/10’s proposal to set up a new organisation.67 At first it appears incongruous that the CIA should have resisted taking on operational responsibility for psychological warfare. The CIG had enthusiastically expanded its functions and duties in order to progress into an independent agency in 1946, but the CIA now vehemently opposed taking on responsibility for psychological warfare operations. There were three reasons for this. First, the feeling amongst the CIA’s leadership was that these activities would jeopardise the security and effectiveness of the Agency’s core secret intelligence mission and potentially tarnish its reputation. Second, this sense was fortified by Houston’s rejection of the new role on legal grounds. A third consideration was that the Agency had little to gain from undertaking peacetime psychological warfare. It had profited from its earlier expansion, particularly into the secret intelligence field, but now that the Agency’s status had been secured through statutory approval, it no longer needed to chase further functions to enhance its position within the bureaucracy.68 In fact, the psychological warfare capability could prove to be a poisoned chalice: it was conceivable that taking on this duty could damage the CIA’s autonomy because the departments would want to control the direction of such an important mission. In other words, the Agency would be told to run the operations and take the blame from any subsequent fallout, but it would not have the authority to actually direct the operations. Despite the CIA’s reluctance, several factors pointed to the Agency as the logical repository for the execution of psychological warfare countermeasures in Western Europe. The SANACC had already recognised that the Departments of State and Defense lacked the requisite expertise, personnel, training and access to unvouchered funds to conduct this programme.69 In late October 1947, two further proposals recommended that the CIA should fulfil the peacetime psychological warfare role. On 24 October Forrestal received a memorandum from Averell Harriman, the former US ambassador to the Soviet Union who would take up his post as US Representative to Europe under the Economic Cooperation Administration in 1948.

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Souers believed the Harriman analysis was ‘a very persuasive and accurate appraisal of the need for psychological warfare operations to counter Soviet-inspired Communist propaganda, particularly in France and Italy’. However, Harriman’s paper left the problematic ‘question of appropriate organization [as being] somewhat indefinite’, prompting Souers to suggest that overt information activities should be continued and expanded by the State Department. According to Souers, covert activities should be separated and assigned to the CIA, ‘since it already has contacts and communications with appropriate organizations and agents in foreign countries’ and could acquire access to unvouchered funds; a full-time interdepartmental board chaired and supervised by the Department of State could provide the mechanism to coordinate the overt and covert programmes.70 The momentum was building towards housing peacetime psychological warfare capability in the CIA. A second memorandum was prepared by the US Department of Defense that emphasised the need to wage a broad psychological warfare campaign to counter the Cominform’s anti-American propaganda campaign in Western Europe. Forrestal agreed with Souers that American psychological warfare countermeasures should be assigned to the CIA, under the direction of an interdepartmental board, because it was an ‘agency of the National Security Council’ and had access to unvouchered funds.71 William Donovan, the wartime head of the OSS who had now returned to his civilian law career, during consultations with Deputy Director Edwin Wright unsurprisingly also agreed that the CIA must engage in ‘the field of Black operations’.72 But the precise arrangement could not be agreed because the State Department argued that it must have primary control over the psychological warfare programme in peacetime. This delayed a final resolution, despite there being a consensus on the urgent need to launch covert countermeasures in Europe. Souers and Kennan attempted to bridge the departmental divide at a luncheon meeting with Forrestal on 31 October, persuading the Secretary of Defense to change his position.73 As a result of his change of heart, at a War Council meeting on 4 November Forrestal declared that all overt and covert peacetime psychological warfare

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activities should be assigned to the State Department, not the CIA.74 This decision was based on the military’s aversion to interfering in civilian peacetime programmes.75 It also demonstrated that Kennan, who had impressed Forrestal ever since dispatching the Long Telegram, was now taking a personal interest in psychological– political warfare and soon positioned himself at the centre of the entire programme. When Hillenkoetter learned of the War Council’s decision he must have felt relieved to hear that the CIA had seemingly avoided this unwanted and troublesome assignment.76 But the Agency’s desire to avoid taking on the covert psychological warfare programme was ultimately dashed.

The final phase: bridging the bureaucratic divide The situation in Europe demanded a resolution to the bureaucratic impasse. Marshall briefed the NSC in early November that although the ‘political advance of the communists in Western Europe has been temporarily halted’ the ramifications might not be positive for US interests. First, the Kremlin would probably ‘clamp down completely on Czechoslovakia, for a relatively free Czechoslovakia could become a threatening salient in Moscow’s political position’.77 The demise of the Czech coalition government would remove the last non-communist regime in Eastern Europe and would confirm the existence of two opposing blocs on the continent. Second, despite the apparent success of non-communists in counteracting the Cominform, Marshall warned that as a result of its deteriorating position, Moscow ‘may very likely order the communist parties in France and Italy to resort to virtual civil war as soon as our right to have troops in Italy expires’.78 This could also lead to communist guerrillas intensifying their efforts against the monarchist forces in the civil war in nearby Greece.79 This message echoed Kennan’s warning to students at the National War College that the Soviets ‘probably envisage the consolidation of their power in Czechoslovakia as soon as possible, and the actual seizure of power by violent means in Greece and Italy and France’.80

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Fears of communist seizures of power in Western Europe were exaggerated, but this resulted in the Truman administration agreeing ‘to open a counterattack upon Soviet propaganda’.81 The State Department now asserted its position, but organising the campaign continued to be problematic.82 Marshall disagreed with Kennan and the War Council that responsibility for peacetime psychological warfare should rest in the State Department. James Lay recounted that he ‘was greatly concerned that the Secretary of State should not be identified’ with such activities.83 Marshall’s suspicions were heightened by the word ‘warfare’ in the latest SANACC report, stimulating an instinctive feeling in the old general that these types of activity should not be run by a civilian department. Marshall did not reject State Department control over psychological warfare policy, but he was totally averse to operational responsibility. Hence Lovett and Hillenkoetter attempted to placate Marshall by assuring him that ‘the intent was only to ensure that all psychological activities were coordinated with our foreign policy and our information program’. Due to Marshall’s objections, the NSC deferred a decision on the organisational responsibility for peacetime psychological warfare but declared that the Secretary of State would be given ‘responsibility for general coordination of all such activities’.84 By mid-November 1947 it was evident that the failure to reach a final decision on the organisation of the peacetime activities was undermining American strategic interests in Western Europe. The Department of Defense had completely distanced itself from peacetime activities, thwarting Hillenkoetter’s suggestion to the SANACC that the military should take responsibility for all psychological warfare activities. Marshall had also rejected operational responsibility for the new covert programme, but Lovett and Kennan still wanted the State Department to at least exercise primary influence over psychological warfare policy. Marshall’s entrenched position resulted in the separation of operational responsibility for overt and covert psychological warfare by assigning these activities to different organisations. The NSC charged the State Department with ‘immediate’ responsibility for

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conducting overt information activities under NSC 4.85 Resolving which agency should take responsibility for covert psychological warfare was a trickier challenge. The departments decided that the CIA should conduct covert operations, despite its reluctance. The remaining sticking point concerned the scope and nature of external operational oversight and policy control over the Agency’s peacetime psychological warfare capability. The CIA accepted responsibility for covert measures but resisted departmental infringement of its independence. Hillenkoetter was determined to retain authority over the activities that the Agency was now charged with conducting. Deputy DCI Wright’s frustration over departmental encroachments boiled over when the NSC staff proposed that a special panel of departmental representatives should be placed within the CIA to oversee psychological warfare operations. Wright lambasted the special panel proposal, arguing that external interference would jeopardise the security of the Agency’s secret intelligence operations and that it ‘can only lead to chaos in this type of operation’.86 Souers responded swiftly to curtail a fresh dispute by reassuring the Agency that the proposed interdepartmental panel would not interfere in the day-to-day running of operations. Souers himself supported the concept of a panel so long as it was restricted to giving ‘advice’ to the Agency, while the NSC should be charged with authority for the overall direction of psychological warfare policy.87 Hillenkoetter accepted the concept of a ‘special panel’ on the condition that it would be strictly advisory. The NSC staff continued to work on a psychological warfare directive and made a draft of NSC 4-A available to Hillenkoetter on 9 December. The CIA successfully requested that the requirement to coordinate its activities with US military and diplomatic representatives should be watered down to provide ‘greater security to our organized covert operations’.88 The Agency also objected to its obligation to obtain ‘approval of all policy directives and major plans for such operations by a panel to be designated by the National Security Council’.89 Hillenkoetter dreaded this type of arrangement, which housed operations in the CIA but gave intrusive control over their direction to external authorities. He realised that it would ‘be

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practically impossible for the strategists to tell him what they wished him to do without insisting also upon telling him how he should do it’.90 The panel concept was now dropped from NSC 4-A, giving basic policy control over peacetime covert psychological warfare to the CIA rather than the departments. This resulted in a legacy of bureaucratic conflict because the departments would not accept their loss of authority over policy to the ‘new kid on the block’ in Washington. Yet the deletion of the advisory panel from the final directive was recommended by the departments, not by the CIA.91 The Secretary of the Army Kenneth Royall believed it was unnecessary to have an intermediary panel between the NSC and the DCI. But it was Marshall who cast the decisive blow to the panel concept. Marshall worried that State Department representation on the panel would compromise rather than enhance the department’s flagship policy, the ERP. Exposure of the CIA’s responsibility for controversial covert activities could be linked back to the State Department if the department had formal representation on a CIA guidance panel. This could tarnish the department’s reputation and undermine the credibility of the Marshall Plan. So although NSC 4 charged the Secretary of State to coordinate the department’s overt psychological warfare activities with the CIA’s covert operations, Marshall decided that in fulfilling this obligation less visible informal channels should be used. Thus the State Department would be dissociated from outward links to any ‘dirty tricks’ conducted by the CIA.92 Marshall’s decision conflicted with Kennan’s view on the need for strict departmental policy control over covert psychological warfare. Their conflicting opinions persisted until the final adoption of NSC 4-A. A briefing memorandum circulated by Kennan on 17 December reveals that the State Department and the Secretary of State staked out contradictory positions just as the Council approved NSC 4-A. While Marshall rejected the panel concept, Kennan accepted the CIA’s operational responsibility for peacetime covert psychological warfare ‘provided that the approval of all policy directives and major plans are obtained from a panel to be designated by the Council’.93

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The end of the beginning: adoption of NSC 4-A A dramatic flurry of activity in mid-December finally unblocked the bureaucratic bottleneck over NSC 4-A. The CIA’s concerns over potential infringements of its authority were overcome, enabling approval of the formal arrangements for the peacetime psychological warfare campaign. On 17 December, a top-secret annex NSC 4-A was quietly sanctioned to supplement the overt psychological warfare charter. NSC 4-A charged the CIA with operational responsibility for peacetime covert psychological warfare. The Council denounced the anti-American activities conducted by the Soviet Union in fervent language: The National Security Council, taking cognizance of the vicious psychological efforts of the USSR, its satellite countries and Communist groups to discredit and defeat the aims and activities of the United States and other Western powers, has determined that, in the interests of world peace and U.S. national security, the foreign information activities of the U.S. Government must be supplemented by covert psychological operations.94 The directive was shorn of the panel arrangement, ostensibly giving the CIA primary authority over the covert psychological warfare programme, so long as operations were ‘consistent with U.S. foreign policy and overt foreign information activities’ and that ‘appropriate agencies [. . .] are kept informed of such operations which will directly affect them’.95 The Agency had seemingly emerged victorious from the administrative skirmishes over psychological warfare. NSC 4-A gave the CIA ‘a free hand as well as full responsibility’ for conducting covert psychological warfare in peacetime.96 This was a pyrrhic victory for DCI Hillenkoetter, who had hoped to avoid any CIA responsibility to undertake these activities. But NSC 4-A apparently assured the Agency’s continued autonomy, enhanced by the unforeseen

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bonus that the departmental panel concept had been abandoned at the last minute. ***** Under the authorities vested in the CIA by the National Security Act of 1947 and NSC 4-A, it seemed to be emerging as the powerful, independent, operations-oriented organisation that Donovan had originally advocated during the war.97 It was ironic that the greatest resistance to this rebirth through an expansion into psychological warfare came from the Agency itself. But Hillenkoetter immediately set about undertaking his new responsibilities under NSC 4-A, instructing the head of the OSO, Donald Galloway, to ‘take immediate steps to prepare a plan for the conduct of covert psychological operations’.98 This order was set against the background of intelligence reports warning of the concerted Soviet-directed communist campaign of ‘disorders, strikes and sabotage’ in France and Italy.99 A special operations group under James Angleton immediately left for Italy to launch the covert American campaign to support non-communist groups in Western Europe.100 Superficially, the adoption of NSC 4-A resolved the bureaucratic wrangling that had rumbled on for more than three months over the organisation and direction of peacetime covert psychological warfare measures. Although senior government officials had identified the urgent need for an American campaign to counteract communist subversion in Western Europe from as early as mid-1947, formal agreement over the organisation of the campaign was divisive and convoluted. NSC 4-A apparently heralded a unified arrangement, but it remained to be seen whether the State Department would accept minimal policy control over peacetime operations once planning and implementation of the campaign began. There was an inauspicious sign for the CIA that the turf war over the control of psychological warfare was going to persist even after the adoption of NSC 4-A. Kennan had been preoccupied with the ERP since the summer of 1947, but his PPS was now taking an active

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interest in the use of unorthodox capabilities in the Cold War. Kennan received one of just three existing copies of NSC 4-A, indicating Marshall’s expectation that the PPS should exert influence over peacetime covert psychological warfare operations. This meant that fresh disputes would be stimulated in 1948 over who should have responsibility and control over Washington’s covert activities in the Cold War.

CHAPTER 2 COLD WARS IN EUROPE AND THE USA: ADMINISTRATIVE CONFLICT OVER THE INAUGURATION OF POLITICAL WARFARE, JANUARY—JUNE 1948

The adoption of NSC 4-A in December 1947 was intended to end a bureaucratic saga that had overshadowed the development of a peacetime psychological warfare capability since mid-1947. Disagreements principally between the Central Intelligence Agency and the Departments of State and Defense were gradually ameliorated over several months by a process of bureaucratic attrition. A final resolution of the arrangements to organise psychological warfare was demanded by the deteriorating political stability of Western Europe and the need for American intervention through unorthodox hidden methods in order to counteract Soviet-communist subversion of the Western bloc. But NSC 4-A did not resolve these fundamental disagreements over the control and responsibility for covert operations between the institutions that had a stake in them. There could be no mediation of these divergent agendas once NSC 4-A had been approved. This was because planning and implementation of the covert psychological warfare programme was now initiated and this

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brought administrative tensions into sharper focus. For this reason, as soon as the CIA’s Special Procedures Group (SPG) initiated covert activities in Europe, as mandated under NSC 4-A, the bureaucratic feud over the control of these activities was rejuvenated. Four rival groups emerged as prominent covert warfare lobbyists. The Department of State, the CIA, the Intelligence Survey Group (ISG) and the armed services held divergent views on the proper organisation and direction of the secret programme. Consequently, the divisions and conflicts within the Truman administration actually eclipsed the previous disputes over psychological warfare in the buildup to the adoption of a new directive NSC 10/2 in June 1948. This organisational wrangling left considerable doubt over whether or not the CIA would retain its hard-fought right to control covert operations. The rekindled dispute over NSC 4-A was exacerbated by the conceptualisation of a new programme by the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff. After Congress ratified the European Recovery Program, and the Marshall Plan was initiated, Western Europe’s political stability appeared more secure. This led Kennan’s PPS to consider the inauguration of a campaign controlled by the State Department and directed not only at Western Europe but the entire continent. Under this new initiative the United States would promote American interests in the West and also attempt to undermine the ruling communist regimes in Eastern Europe. The new project, dubbed political warfare by the PPS, incorporated elements of the CIA’s current activities under a broader and more dynamic conceptualisation of American approaches to the Cold War. But the new initiative encroached on the CIA’s jurisdiction under NSC 4-A to perform peacetime covert psychological warfare, leading to further clashes between the Agency and the State Department. Once again, the result was delay to the formal organisation of a covert political warfare campaign. Of far greater importance, the failure to overcome bureaucratic differences significantly affected how the political warfare capability was finally set up under NSC 10/2. The bureaucratic clash over the organisation of political warfare overshadowed policy-level considerations of its strategic feasibility. Parochial institutional concerns took precedence over wider national strategic planning. This

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left an invidious organisational and strategic legacy that undermined the political warfare campaign waged by the Office of Policy Coordination from late 1948 onwards.

The SPG and the initiation of covert psychological warfare Under NSC 4-A the CIA established the SPG within the Office of Special Operations to conduct peacetime covert psychological warfare operations. Senior Truman officials, such as Forrestal and Marshall, had wanted to launch covert operations to safeguard America’s influence and contain Soviet expansionism in Western Europe during the autumn and winter of 1947. But CIA analysts opined that events on the ground had stabilised by the end of the year and the sense of crisis in Washington had lifted.1 This was reflected by the SPG’s slow activation. It was not until February 1948 that the new office was actually organised. The renewed impetus for the SPG to intervene in Europe did not emanate directly from the situation in Western Europe but from the communist takeover of the Czech government in February and March 1948. The Czech coup made a profound impression on senior American officials such as Forrestal, who believed it presaged a new boldness in Soviet behaviour. It was also seen in light of the imminent elections in Italy, strengthening the feeling that Washington needed to intervene to stem the communist tide and to ensure that American allies in Western Europe were bolstered through material and psychological support. This was the message passed to Hillenkoetter by Forrestal on 12 February 1948, spurring the CIA into life with the appointment of Thomas Cassady as head of the SPG later that month.2 Cassady immediately requested that his immediate boss, Assistant Director for Special Operations Colonel Galloway (soon succeeded by Major General William Wyman), inform all CIA stations in Europe and the Middle East of the CIA’s authority to conduct covert psychological warfare operations.3 Over the next month Cassady laid the administrative and operational foundations for the new office. The task was completed with the SPG’s formal activation on 29 March.4

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At this time Hillenkoetter advised Galloway that Cassady’s group was to engage in foreign covert psychological operations to ‘undermine the strength of foreign instrumentalities [. . .] engaged in activities inimical to the United States’ and to support US foreign policy by taking measures to favourably influence foreign public opinion. The SPG was therefore launched with a fairly broad operational charter. However, two notable restrictions were levied on its activities. Under NSC 4-A, the SPG was required to coordinate with the Departments of State and Defense to ensure consistency with overt foreign and information policy. It must also undertake ‘covert psychological operations’, which in practice encompassed ‘all measures of information and persuasion short of physical in which the originating role of the United States Government will always be kept concealed’. In other words, American responsibility for the SPG’s activities must remain hidden.5 Under Cassady, the SPG immediately initiated ‘black’ propaganda operations in Western Europe. These first actions largely involved secret information drives to win public opinion in the Western occupation zones in Germany. Angleton and his colleagues also busily organised covert propaganda and funding projects of the pending Marshall aid in France, Italy and other recipient countries.6 Moreover, the SPG soon exceeded its envisaged role by commencing a small-scale propaganda campaign inside the Soviet bloc, through radio broadcasts from a transmitter in West Germany and leafletdrops delivered overhead via weather balloons. In undertaking these early psychological warfare activities in Europe, the CIA’s leadership was careful to liaise with the departments and acquire their approval.7 Hillenkoetter attempted to foster a constructive working relationship by emphasising to Galloway and Cassady that the SPG should only undertake operations that ‘are fully consistent with the foreign policy and objectives of the United States Government’.8 In fact the State Department was initially reticent to get involved with the Agency’s psychological warfare projects and Under Secretary Lovett attempted to distance the State Department from operational collusion with the SPG. When he was informed of Project UMPIRE and the plans to beam propaganda

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across the German occupation zones into the Soviet bloc, the PPS’s John Paton Davies told Cassady that Lovett had given the ‘green light’ to go ahead and implement the plan, but that the Under Secretary ‘wanted to know very little about our project’. Davies explained that the State Department wanted to be appraised of progress and ‘proposed operations in order that they would not conflict with State’s policies’, but wanted no closer involvement.9 Therefore, in March 1948, the State Department was content to maintain a limited role as overseer of the SPG. Lovett echoed Marshall’s insistence that there was no need for a formal chain of command from State Department to CIA that would associate the department with the Agency’s activities. The State Department wanted no part in the planning or implementation phase of operations, other than being kept ‘appraised’ of their progress. But Marshall and Lovett’s preference to distance the State Department from the SPG would soon be challenged by Kennan’s PPS, which was responsible for liaising with the SPG and exercised an ambiguous level of policy control over the new unit. On the other hand, the geographic desks within the State Department did not have security clearance to access NSC 4-A and were peripheral in the development of the new clandestine programme.10

The Cold War in Europe: Italy and the historical narrative The launch of the SPG coincided with a renewed upsurge of American anxiety over the political deterioration of Europe. The communist takeover of the Prague Government under Klement Gottwald in late February 1948 had been anticipated by the PPS several months previously as a defensive move by the Kremlin to consolidate its hold over Eastern Europe as its position declined.11 But the Czech coup was followed by an alarmist telegram sent by the military governor of Germany General Clay from Berlin in early March prior to the first, limited Soviet blockade of the city beginning early in April. These events precipitated a war scare in Washington. Most American officials now subscribed to the view that the balance of power in continental Europe was tipping in Moscow’s favour, even though these fears were overstated.

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Although Kennan had expected the Czechs to be brought into line by Moscow, he was also nervous about the rapid turn of events. He sent Marshall a cable from Manila that underlined the gravity with which he regarded the unfolding situation: [. . .] the savage abruptness and cynical unconcern for appearances of [the] recent action in Czechoslovakia leads me to feel that [the] Kremlin leaders must be driven by [a] sense of extreme urgency. They [are] probably realizing that they are basically over-extended in eastern Europe and that unless they can break [the] unity of western Europe and disturb [the] ERP pattern it will be difficult for them to hold on in eastern and central Europe [. . . .] If this analysis is correct, then there is indeed a real and new element of danger in [the] present situation, and we must be prepared for all eventualities.12 Kennan’s perception of an intensified Soviet threat to Western Europe was widely held throughout the Truman administration and indeed by Western governments in Europe. The heightened sense of vulnerability across the Western bloc precipitated several key foreign policy measures that came to define the early Cold War. The salient consequence was the gradual acceptance in Washington of the need to strengthen its military position vis-a`-vis the Soviet Union. During 1948 the US accelerated plans to formalise an unprecedented peacetime military alliance with Western Europe, as well as to proceed with the integration of an independent West German state within the Western European bloc.13 The revived sense of crisis prompted the National Security Council to identify Italy as the most vulnerable Western European nation to communist encroachment. In the midst of the crisis, and with the Italian elections pending, Washington acknowledged that Italian communists could accomplish a takeover of power by peaceful, legal means. Such a ‘loss’ was symbolically and politically unthinkable, not only for the Truman administration’s international standing but also because it was almost midway through a presidential election year. Kennan was also alarmed by the

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prospective political impact on other Western European governments of a communist electoral victory in Italy. These regimes might be discouraged from opposing communist advances should Italy succumb democratically to communism. Kennan even contemplated putting pressure on the Italian government to ban the Italian Communist Party (PCI). This, he argued, ‘might well be preferable to a bloodless election victory, unopposed by ourselves, which would give the Communists the entire peninsula at one coup and send waves of panic to all surrounding areas’.14 Kennan’s alarmist proposal was not acted upon. However, Director of the Office of European Affairs John D. Hickerson did raise the general problem of how to ‘effectively assist, apart from ERP, in stopping further expansion of the area of Communist dictatorship in Europe’. For Hickerson the threat did not involve overt military attack but ‘internal fifth-column aggression supported by the threat of external force, on the Czech model’.15 Hickerson recommended a range of overt measures to stiffen Western Europe’s backbone. Washington subsequently adopted NSC 1/3 to implement an array of measures to support the Italian non-communist electoral campaign and undermine the Left.16 The traditional historical narrative posits that the Italian elections in April 1948 were regarded as a successful test-case of American peacetime covert psychological warfare by Washington.17 The perception of the success of covert intervention following De Gasperi’s electoral victory on 18 April over Italy’s socialist Popular Democratic Front (PDF) was, according to this view, a decisive factor in the shift from NSC 4-A to NSC 10/2.18 This narrative implies that there was a link between the Truman administration’s perception of success in the Italian campaign and the decision to expand the political warfare capability beyond the parameters of the Italian testcase. Spurred on by crises in Prague and Berlin, the Truman administration developed more aggressive measures, short of war, to contain communist expansion in Western Europe and to undermine the Soviet bloc itself. Thus, in mid-June 1948, the NSC authorised a dramatic expansion of the CIA’s covert psychological warfare capability to include political, economic and paramilitary warfare.

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The orthodox interpretation of these events implies that the Italian case provided continuity between the development of NSC 4-A and NSC 10/2. But such a seamless narrative overlooks several important considerations. First, this overemphasises the scale and importance of the American covert psychological warfare intervention in the buildup to the Italian elections. Evidence suggests that the CIA’s involvement in Italy was actually quite limited. Overall the SPG spent US$10 million–20 million on anti-communist propaganda and financing operations in the run-up to the elections.19 This was a considerable sum that set a precedent for future covert interventions, but it was expended in an ad hoc manner that undermined the effectiveness of the venture. Therefore, although some Truman officials were impressed by the potential effectiveness of covert operations, the SPG’s role in the Italian case was not the primary showcase. Furthermore, although Washington patted itself on the back for the electoral victory of De Gasperi’s Christian Democrats, American ‘success’ in Italy was primarily attributed to its overt intervention. Official and semi-official measures by the State Department, the American Embassy in Rome and private initiatives were far better funded.20 They were also more sophisticated and effective than Angleton’s scatter-gun approach with the SPG. American intervention primarily flowed from the recommendations of NSC 1/3 as well as the proactive inventiveness of figures such as the American Ambassador in Rome James C. Dunn. The most conspicuous and influential activities included American wheat shipments to Italy, an Italian – American letter-writing campaign encouraging Italian family members to vote non-communist, high-profile speeches by Marshall and Truman certifying that future ERP aid would be cut off in the event of a PDF/PCI victory, and a one-hour radio broadcast featuring Hollywood celebrities.21 This is not to denigrate the role of American covert operations during the campaign in Italy. Angleton’s SPG cohort busied themselves clandestinely bribing local officials, paying off newspaper editors and co-opting labour unions for the pro-Western cause.22 But funding for these covert activities was not secured until relatively late in the Italian election campaign, suggesting that the SPG played a

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relatively minor and belated role. In early April 1948, two weeks before election day, Hillenkoetter went before House and Senate subcommittees seeking Congressional appropriation of secret funds that the CIA could divert to pro-American interest groups in Italy.23 By this stage, overt efforts to bolster the non-communist cause were in full swing, thus demonstrating that this was more of an influential factor on the outcome of the elections. The net influence of the overall American intervention on Italian voters is itself moot and difficult to quantify. The revival of the debate in Washington over peacetime covert warfare coincided with the aftermath of the Italian elections. But bureaucratic factors involving the emergence of disparate lobby groups were the primary cause for the shift towards NSC 10/2. These political warfare interest groups were not only motivated by the Italian campaign. Moreover, there was considerable discontinuity between the psychological warfare charter under NSC 4-A and the political warfare programme that came into being under NSC 10/2. The motivation behind the SPG activities in Italy and elsewhere in the first half of 1948 was primarily defensive. This complemented the containment policy of preventing communist encroachments in Western Europe in order to protect the incipient ERP. By contrast, the programme inaugurated under NSC 10/2 involved much more offensive methods and objectives. This was based on an emerging initiative devised by the PPS to utilise the thousands of displaced e´migre´s from the Soviet bloc in operations to undermine Soviet influence in its own backyard. Unlike the limited psychological warfare charter of NSC 4-A, NSC 10/2 marks the first official conceptualisation of American actions outside the containment framework, although no strategic clarification was included in the political warfare directive that tallied the new capability with US objectives. The shift from the defensive objectives under NSC 4-A to a more aggressive agenda under NSC 10/2 was complex, involving intricate and fluid bureaucratic dynamics that had only limited connection to the Italian election ‘test-case’. Certainly, the notion that a perception of success regarding the SPG’s Italian operations convinced Washington to expand the capability is wide of the mark. This

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interpretation fails to demonstrate the ebbs and flows of the convoluted discourse over NSC 10/2. The new political warfare directive was the product of a major bureaucratic clash between at least four different policy-level actors. The orthodox view emphasises George Kennan’s role and that of his Planning Staff to explain the shift to NSC 10/2.24 Kennan and the PPS were indeed pivotal, authoring the original political warfare memorandum and exerting enormous influence over the ensuing debates. Nevertheless, there is a danger that focusing on Kennan underestimates the significance of several distinct lobby cliques that emerged between January and June 1948, of which Kennan’s Planning Staff was just one. Four groups in particular – the PPS, the Pentagon, the CIA and Allen Dulles’ ISG – jostled for influence. Each interest group had its own agenda and put forward conflicting proposals to set up a new psychological– political warfare capability. Both the military and the CIA advocated ‘psychological warfare’. The former called for the mobilisation of a wartime organisation while the latter was primarily interested in its present peacetime role. The external ISG, set up to review the intelligence services by Truman in January 1948, supported broadening the range of peacetime covert operational capabilities, as did the PPS. Both groups favoured sanctioning activities beyond ‘psychological warfare’ to include political, economic and even paramilitary warfare in both peace and wartime (as did the military over time). But the PPS and the ISG brought different proposals to the table on how to organise and implement the broader capability. The chief spokesmen for these groups, Kennan and Dulles, did not share identical views regarding the scope, character and management of the proposed new activities.

The debate begins over the organisation of political warfare The administrative development of NSC 10/2 originated in January 1948, when the armed services resumed the State-Army-NavyAirforce Coordinating Committee investigations into wartime psychological warfare. The SANACC had been side-tracked in late 1947 by the consideration of peacetime psychological warfare under

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the NSC 4 series. The military resurrected its efforts to prepare for wartime activities in light of the worsening relations between Moscow and Washington since the last SANACC report had been prepared. Thus, after several revisions, on 8 January 1948 the SANACC approved SWNCC 304/6. Over the next seven weeks the Joint Subsidiary Plans Committee surveyed the opinions of the three branches of the military services, completing its report on 5 April. Although a consensus was not reached, the new paper JCS 1735/4 concluded that the proposed ‘Psychological Warfare Organization’ envisaged in SWNCC 304/6 should be established ‘as soon as practicable’ and the scope of the new office should be restricted in peacetime to planning and coordination.25 Because SWNCC 304/6 did not specify an agency to prepare wartime activities, the Joint Chiefs of Staff report recommended that the SANACC should amend it to provide this. With the SANACC’s endorsement, the revised proposal SANACC 304/14 was forwarded to Souers and the NSC members on 7 April. This paper proposed that a psychological warfare organisation should be established under the NSC and that its immediate peacetime scope and activities should be limited to that of a ‘working nucleus’ solely for planning and coordination.26 The State Department absolutely opposed the creation of a new independent psychological warfare office. The source of this opposition was not the PPS but George Allen’s office of the Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs, which was responsible under NSC 4 for directing Washington’s overt psychological warfare campaign. Days before the release of SANACC 304/14, Allen and his colleague Donald Stone lobbied Lovett to block any move by the armed services to establish a new psychological warfare office at the upcoming NSC meeting. Allen and Stone urged Lovett to ‘go slow on any positive commitments’ because psychological warfare was ‘in essence a political activity’ and should therefore only be conducted by the military in wartime. They further argued that under NSC 4 these responsibilities had been placed in the State Department and should remain there, while any arising Pentagon claims that the State Department had been ‘lax’ in undertaking its commitments were ‘exaggerated to say the least’.27

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In essence, the State Department feared that the military was moving into its domain despite clear restrictions limiting the SANACC initiative to planning for a wartime operational capability. At the next council meeting Lovett prevented any progress on the matter, rejecting the approval of a ‘new psychological warfare authorization’ because ‘in peacetime the State Department should control this activity, as provided in NSC 4’.28 The matter was thus sabotaged by the State Department. Due to the conflicting views of the State Department and the JCS, the matter was transmitted to the NSC staff to resolve. Thus the State Department’s intervention resulted in the issue of wartime psychological warfare planning converging with the more dominant debates over peacetime covert psychological– political warfare.

The origins of peacetime political warfare A State Department proposal on the peacetime ‘inauguration of organized political warfare’ was completed a few weeks after the clash over wartime psychological warfare.29 The new initiative originated with the PPS, which was taking an increasing interest in the SPG’s activities the PPS agreed with George Allen that the State Department should exert primary authority over all peacetime US activities. This jurisdictional agenda to control the psychological warfare activities mandated to the CIA under NSC 4-A partly explains the motivation behind the new PPS proposal. For the State Department the issue of authority over the implementation of peacetime policy was a matter of principle. In February 1948 Kennan criticised the department’s loss of administrative control over the implementation of the ERP. The lessons from this were applicable to the political warfare project. ‘Our experience’, Kennan counselled, ‘has demonstrated that not only are new agencies of little value in executing policies which go beyond the vision and the educational horizon of their own personnel, but that they actually develop a momentum of their own which in the final analysis, tends to shape – rather than to serve – the national policy.’30 The State Department likewise resented encroachments on

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its policymaking prerogative. The Planning Staff and the geographic desks bristled when an NSC staff paper drafted at Forrestal’s request at the Pentagon attempted to clarify US policies and objectives in light of ‘Soviet-Directed World Communism’.31 Since Kennan’s rise to prominence inside government with the Long Telegram, he had been contemplating ‘what measures the democratic states have at their disposal for resisting totalitarian pressure and the extent to which these measures can be successful’. In September 1946 he lectured at the National War College on the need to employ a full range of psychological, economic and political resources in combination with ‘a preponderance’ of ‘political, economic and moral strength’ to achieve American goals in the postwar period. ‘We must work out a general plan of what the United States wants in this world,’ Kennan argued, ‘and pursue that plan with all the measures at our disposal.’32 By 1947 Kennan was demanding that the ‘inherent expansive tendencies’ of the Soviet system ‘must be firmly contained at all times by counter-pressure’ applied by the West.33 But this conception was still basically defensive and oriented towards Western Europe. The conceptual gap over how to deal with the Soviet bloc was not filled by his famous Foreign Affairs article published in July 1947, in which he claimed that ‘the United States has it in its power to increase enormously the strains under which Soviet policy must operate, to force upon the Kremlin a far greater degree of moderation and circumspection than it has had to observe in recent years, and in this way to promote tendencies which must eventually find their outlet in either the breakup or the gradual mellowing of Soviet power’.34 Kennan himself recognised this shortcoming between methods and objectives in the Foreign Affairs piece, alongside his failure to distinguish between the political and military containment of communism.35 Over the course of 1947 Kennan started to examine the fragmented American approach towards Western and Eastern Europe by considering what could be done in the East. In May he claimed that in the ‘Russian-occupied areas – the satellite areas of Eastern and Central Europe – there are [. . .] dangers and weaknesses for the Soviet position’. However, at this stage Kennan was

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pessimistic about modifying Soviet power because, he said, Russia ‘should be able eventually to ride out her [economic] difficulties’. Moreover, in Eastern Europe he believed that: ‘There is not much we can usefully do, except to reiterate our position and to continue our public pressure for removal of Russian forces and for greater concessions to national independence and popular government.’36 By late 1947 Kennan’s views had evolved into a call for a more assertive foreign policy. His desire to provide a broader strategic basis for US policy, encompassing the Soviet bloc, was at the root of the emerging PPS political warfare agenda. In December he lamented the inadequacy of American peacetime capabilities. ‘We are dealing here in the political field,’ he declared, ‘and I can only say that the weapons we have for conducting this type of operation, short of war, are pathetically weak and rudimentary.’37 These remarks were made the day after NSC 4-A had been approved, revealing Kennan’s disappointment that Marshall, at the final hour, had abrogated the State Department’s control over the new psychological warfare campaign. In early May 1948 Kennan and the Planning Staff made their move to ensure that the PPS controlled a reformulated political warfare capability. The PPS recommended assigning responsibility for conducting the proposed political warfare operations to a separate ‘directorate’ to find ‘cover’ outside the department. This would preserve Marshall’s desire for plausible deniability. Unlike the present arrangement under NSC 4-A, the State Department (in other words the PPS) should exert primary policy control over peacetime political warfare plans and operations facilitated by departmental supervisors. The issue of authority and responsibility for peacetime covert political warfare now became the central point of contention in the drafting of NSC 10/2. Since early 1948, the PPS had been considering remodelling US foreign policy for the Cold War, although this did not initially impede the working arrangements with the SPG. The Planning Staff, and in particular John Paton Davies, George Butler and Kennan, came to believe that political warfare should become an integral but selective component of a more dynamic and better-coordinated foreign policy. For his part, Kennan had been stung by criticism of

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his Foreign Affairs article. He looked towards political warfare operations in part to remedy the shortcomings exposed in that piece.38 Covert operations should be employed to protect American allies in Western Europe, while also counteracting and undermining communists across both sides of the iron curtain. Kennan had long argued that the primary Soviet threat to Western Europe was political in nature, a view shared by CIA analysts.39 Initiating political measures covertly guided by the State Department would address some of the tactical deficiencies that he had long bemoaned.40

PPS 22, Bloodstone, the NCFE and RFE As early as mid-February 1948 John Paton Davies explored one aspect of the PPS’s expanded political warfare concept. In a document entitled PPS/22 Davies discussed Washington’s current failure to mobilise the ‘talents’ of the Soviet bloc refugee community, comprising of up to 700,000 e´migre´s. This mass of people, he said, could be put to use by the US both as a source of intelligence on the Soviet Union and for ‘politico-psychological operations’. At this stage Davies was happy for the project to be an interdepartmental venture, recommending that the SANACC look into whether ‘the mass of refugees from the Soviet world [can] be effectively utilized in Europe and Asia to further U.S. interests in the current struggle’.41 The SANACC referred the matter to the NSC staff, where PPS/22 gathered dust for three weeks. This prompted PPS deputy head George Butler to ask Frank Wisner, the State Department’s representative on the SANACC, to suggest as a ‘matter of some urgency’ that an interdepartmental committee should ‘begin an exploration of the specific problems raised in the paper’.42 A revised version of the study, PPS 22/1, was subsequently submitted for Lovett’s approval on 11 March before being transmitted to the SANACC, the State Department’s Office of Intelligence and Research and the CIA. Drawing on the ideas of the earlier draft, PPS 22/1 placed particular importance on the potentiality of defections from the elite strata of the Soviet world to act as a demoralising and divisive factor against the Kremlin that would enhance US ‘national

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interests’. Emphasis on the impact of defections on the internal structure of Soviet power reflected the CIA’s scepticism about the value of intelligence gleaned from Soviet bloc refugees.43 But PPS 22/1 also made an important conceptual advance. The Planning Staff was now exploring how Washington could not only strengthen its own position and that of its allies in Western Europe, but also how it could undermine the power and influence of the ruling communist regimes in the Soviet bloc. It was surmised that this could potentially be achieved by fostering the defection of senior communist officials to aggravate ‘all-pervasive distrust and suspicion’ behind the iron curtain, thereby multiplying ‘denunciations’ and ‘repressive measures’. Such an implosive ‘chain of events’ would not only demoralise the Soviet world, but would also have a ‘stifling effect’ on Soviet capabilities and productive efficiency.44 By May 1948 the SANACC committees had concluded their studies and proposed a programme called ‘Bloodstone’ to mobilise ‘native anti-communist elements’ that had ‘shown extreme fortitude in the face of Communist menace’. Bloodstone involved gathering the mass of anti-communist Eastern European refugees into organisations such as student, farmer, labour and women’s groups, thus mirroring the tactics employed by the Cominform. Such action was required to fill the gaps in the American ranks of specialised personnel with expertise in the target Soviet bloc nations, a deficiency highlighted by the PPS/22 series. Bloodstone was justified because e´migre´s possessed the ‘“know how” to counter communist propaganda’ and the ‘techniques to obtain control of mass movements’. They were also, apparently, experts in copying communist talents to manipulate ‘Socialist, trade union, intellectual, moderate right wing groups and others’. Wisner requested US$5 million in laundered money for ‘secret disbursement’ to get Bloodstone under way. Recognising that the SANACC held no operational capacity, he also proposed creating ‘an entirely new propaganda agency within this Government’.45 Wisner doubted that Hillenkoetter’s office would have the ability or the inclination to undertake the new SANACC project. The PPS concept of secret US sponsorship of foreign e´migre´ organisations was endorsed by the Truman administration in 1949

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and became one of the most important operations run by the PPS and the Office of Policy Coordination under Wisner’s command. Initially, Kennan, Davies and the PPS liaison official to OPC Robert Joyce believed that these nationalist organisations, if properly supported and managed by the US, would be perfect vehicles for delivering a powerful antidote to Soviet power in Eastern Europe. The establishment of the National Committee for a Free Europe (NCFE) in April 1949 was coordinated between the State Department and the OPC. Ostensibly it was a private organisation funded by philanthropic American citizens. But the OPC substantially supplemented its overt sponsorship by private institutions, such as the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations, with unvouchered CIA appropriations covertly funnelled into the NCFE. The OPC immediately began to recruit and organise e´migre´s from the displaced persons camps in Europe to work in the numerous nationalist councils under the NCFE that soon sprang up in the US. The most famous and effective of the e´migre´ organisations established under the NCFE was Radio Free Europe (RFE). The CIA provided the NCFE with a transmitter in February 1950 and RFE’s headquarters were established near Munich. The purportedly private radio organisation made its first shortwave broadcast to Czechoslovakia on 4 July 1950.46 RFE was soon transmitting anti-communist propaganda to the Soviet bloc countries of Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria. A sister organisation, Radio Liberty (RL), was created in 1951 by the American Committee for the Liberation of the Peoples of Russia. Its activities complemented the RFE operation by broadcasting anti-communist propaganda directly into the Soviet Union. The OPC’s chief Frank Wisner was a keen proponent of this branch of the political warfare programme, famously describing it as the ‘Mighty Wurlitzer’.47 The covert psychological warfare campaign received widespread support within the Truman administration. By secretly funding and supplying guidelines to RFE and RL, Washington believed that it could coordinate and direct the messages being relayed by Soviet bloc exiles and refugees back to their countrymen. Close supervision and policy direction by OPC officers,

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in liaison with the State Department in Washington, was organised at a meeting in early May 1950. Robert Joyce would ‘on the policy level, act as the Department’s cut out’ with RFE. The State Department would prepare ‘regular policy guidance for the American supervisory personnel’ that would be used by RFE ‘as the basic terms of reference’. RFE must also remain ‘open to any positive ideas’ offered by the State Department. Meanwhile, to ensure that there was ‘no deviation from overall policy’ it was decided that ‘a man at the working desk level’ would be responsible for closely regulating the content of RFE broadcasts. He would have access to translations of recordings upon request. In return, the State Department would make available a ‘spicy percentage’ of material ‘culled from official sources’ for RFE to broadcast, although the vast bulk of material would be gleaned from unclassified underground sources.48 Despite the establishment of coordination mechanisms, ambiguity over whether US strategic objectives supported fostering ‘revolution’ or ‘evolution’ in the Soviet bloc complicated the parameters of the broadcasting content. As Rositzke observes, the ambivalence in American aims for RFE/RL in the Soviet bloc persisted well beyond the 1950s. Writing three decades later, Rositzke contended that while there was ‘official acceptance of the status quo’, unofficial encouragement of resistance and the ultimate hope of liberation ‘has survived to this day’.49

The PPS – CIA feud In April 1948, the PPS stepped up its calls to develop a political warfare capability to enhance US foreign policy. This coincided with congressional ratification of the ERP and the prospect that Western Europe’s political stability would now be secure. The first PPS papers on this subject related to specific projects rather than to broader strategic objectives. The PPS proposed to establish ‘freedom committees’ linked covertly to the US government, but this initiative did not instantly win over departmental colleagues. On 7 April, Deputy Director of the Office of European Affairs Llewellyn E. Thompson, having read through the PPS pitch, informed Butler

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that sponsoring such committees was inadvisable as it could potentially embarrass the US government. Thompson did not dismiss the subject out of hand, agreeing with the PPS that an ‘unofficial or private organization’ covertly linked to Washington ‘would be very useful’. But for Thompson the priority was to set up ‘an official body, either in this Department or on an interdepartmental basis’ that would ‘keep us accurately informed of the activities and views of foreign nationality groups in this country’.50 At a staff meeting two days later, the PPS discussed the draft plan in light of departmental feedback, deciding that ‘further study’ was needed on the issue.51 Despite the rather lukewarm reception it received, the proposal was eventually incorporated into the political warfare programme drawn up by the PPS at the end of April. The growing attention paid by the Planning Staff to the political warfare question coincided with the crescendo of American intervention in the Italian elections. The PPS was aghast at the way that the SPG had handed over large sums of money to anti-communist groups during the election campaign, with little or no control over how the funds were spent.52 The PPS’s interest in the covert psychological warfare intervention in Italy was based on negative assessments of the SPG’s performance and the need for tighter guidance from the State Department. It was felt that Cassady’s SPG was operating ‘too freely’, indicating a lack of adequate machinery to coordinate covert and overt operations.53 The CIA began to feel besieged from several sides; on 26 April it ‘survived’ a report by the NSC consultants investigating its execution of the NSC 4-A mandate.54 Nevertheless, Hillenkoetter only received lukewarm support from his State Department counterpart George Allen in the study.55 Allen Dulles now stepped into the breach in his capacity as a member of the ISG, even though there was no stipulation to consider political warfare in its charter.56 On 30 April (the same day that the PPS completed the first draft of its political warfare proposal) Kennan, Davies and another Planning Staff official Henry Villard met Dulles and his staff member Robert Blum. Dulles was fully briefed on the Planning Staff’s political warfare initiative.57 Following this

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meeting Dulles decided that the ISG should put forward its own recommendations on peacetime covert activities. Dulles hoped that his status as a recognised expert in this field would give him leeway to influence the debates inside the Truman administration over the control and implementation of peacetime political warfare. As the ISG entered the fray, the PPS showed its hand. One of its primary motivations was to wrest the authority for psychological warfare from the CIA. The PPS was concerned by the SPG’s performance and its autonomy from the State Department (despite the CIA’s efforts to maintain liaison links). The Planning Staff wanted to bring these operations under its close control. In late April the State Department reviewed the SPG’s propaganda project, codenamed ULTIMATE, which was being conducted from Germany. Kennan flexed his administrative muscle and called for the termination of the ‘incitive’ activities while the international climate remained tense during the first Soviet blockade of Berlin. This marked the Planning Staff’s first step towards overhauling the SPG capability in order to draw it under the State Department’s control. Cassady naturally resented outside meddling into his operational affairs and referred the PPS dispute to his superiors in the CIA. He argued that much of the propaganda produced by the State Department during the Italian elections had been far more provocative than his Project ULTIMATE material. The CIA’s leadership was sympathetic, ordering Cassady ‘to ignore State in the matter’ and proceed with the campaign. Hillenkoetter was exasperated because on the one hand he was being criticised by George Allen for not concentrating his efforts on anti-communist democratic forces, while on the other hand the PPS was attempting to circumscribe his operations against the Soviet bloc. Nonetheless he acted cautiously, not wanting to fall foul of the State Department. He advised the SPG that general operational information should continue to be submitted to the State Department no matter how recalcitrant the Planning Staff became.58 Cassady recognised the CIA’s responsibility to maintain ‘close and continuing policy liaison’ with the State Department in the planning of its psychological warfare operations. For its ‘day-to-day activities’ Cassady recommended that the ‘SPG rely on the Department of State

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as the primary outside source for policy direction and guidance’. The SPG chief also extended an olive branch by proposing that ‘a high ranking staff officer attached to the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Public Affairs’ should be appointed as a liaison officer to ensure continuous coordination between the two organisations. Nevertheless, Cassady also emphasised his own view, buttressed by NSC 4-A, that the SPG should not ‘reveal to the Department of State operational methods and techniques, or other classified operational details, involved in the conduct of black propaganda activities’. Exchanges of information should involve ‘the broad, general character of SPG programs and the general capabilities of SPG’, rather than ‘specific operational details as to how, by whom and specifically where and through what channels SPG activities will be conducted’. Preserving secrecy and plausible denial, according to Cassady, demanded this limitation on departmental access to specific operational details.59 This was a compromise gesture that echoed the views of Marshall and Lovett on the need to distance the State Department from direct operational involvement. But this did not disguise Cassady’s real message that the SPG was not going to be easily intimidated by the machinations of Kennan’s Planning Staff. PPS concerns about ‘freewheeling’ SPG operations were amplified by the CIA’s decision to overrule Kennan’s veto of Project ULTIMATE. With that example in mind, Kennan informed Dulles that political warfare should not be conducted independently of foreign policy.60 The CIA’s reluctance to conduct operations beyond intelligence collection, analysis and propaganda strengthened the feeling that a separate political warfare organisation would have to be created.61 This indicated the PPS’s determination to draw in the SPG’s activities under its control. To push this through, the PPS disseminated its political warfare proposal to the wider administration in order to gain support for a revision of NSC 4-A. Having learned from the lukewarm departmental response to its ‘freedom committee’ proposal, the PPS gathered the department’s top brass to a meeting on 3 May to forge a departmental consensus on the political warfare programme before taking it to the wider executive.62 The Project ULTIMATE dispute

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was just a shot across the CIA’s bows. The real battle for control of an expanded covert warfare programme was about to commence.

The inauguration of organised political warfare On 4 May, the PPS completed its proposal for the ‘inauguration of organized political warfare’. This was an action-oriented manifesto, not merely a tactical bureaucratic manoeuvre to reverse the administrative arrangements enshrined in NSC 4-A.63 The new proposal revealed the PPS’s vision of an extensive but streamlined programme of coordinated overt and covert operations to wage the Cold War. The PPS recommended a dramatic expansion of the range of operations sanctioned under NSC 4-A. Propaganda would still be undertaken, but operations should be broadened to include ‘clandestine support of “friendly” foreign governments, “black” psychological warfare and even encouragement of underground resistance in hostile states’. The ‘freedom committees’ concept, now described as ‘Liberation Committees’, was expanded so that organised groups of e´migre´s could perform ‘Underground Activities behind the iron curtain’ including the covert supply of ‘guidance and funds’ to ‘resistance movements’ in the Soviet bloc.64 The paper also endorsed support of ‘Indigenous Anti-Communist Elements in Threatened Countries of the Free World’, as was undertaken during the Italian elections, as well as ‘Preventative Direct Action in Free Countries’. The scope of these operations was much wider than the SPG’s mandate under NSC 4-A, demonstrating that the PPS envisaged a far more proactive approach to the Cold War in order to challenge the Kremlin’s power and influence in the Soviet bloc. The memorandum also emphasised that formal arrangements for controlling the ‘two major types of political warfare – one overt and the other covert’ would also differ from the set-up under NSC 4-A. Overt and covert operations should be ‘directed and coordinated by the Department of State’ rather than ceding authority for covert operations to an external agency. Two fundamental principles were at the heart of the PPS’s political warfare proposal. First, the NSC should expand the range of peacetime overt and covert operations in the US arsenal to better

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equip the US to prosecute the Cold War. This included operations targeting the Soviet bloc. Second, the State Department should have close control over the planning and implementation of political warfare in order to facilitate its effective coordination and integration with other components of foreign policy.65 A proxy ‘directorate’ of departmental representatives should be created to direct the programme, led by a director who would exert ‘complete authority over covert political warfare operations conducted by this Government’. In peacetime, this authority would rest with the State Department, switching to the Pentagon in wartime. The PPS political warfare proposal was not simply a call to escalate covert (as well as overt) measures to wage the Cold War. Although the PPS advocated expanding the range of activities authorised by the NSC, it did not necessarily call for an increase in their volume. In fact the PPS suggested that the new directorate should be small, comprising of ‘a staff of 4 officers designated by the Department of State and 4 officers designated by the Secretary of National Defense’. This indicated the PPS’s intention that political warfare operations would be selectively employed and closely controlled by the Planning Staff: If we are to engage in such operations, they must be under unified direction. One man must be boss. And he must, as those responsible for the overt phases of political warfare, be answerable to the Secretary of State, who directs the whole in coordination. The SPG’s performance during the Italian elections was singled out as demonstrating why the current set-up needed fixing. The PPS wanted to ensure that effective policymaking and operational machinery would be in place to deal with future crises, and in so doing barely disguised its criticism of the SPG’s performance in Italy: Having assumed greater international responsibilities than ever before in our history and having been engaged by the full might of the Kremlin’s political warfare, we cannot afford to leave unmobilized our resources for covert political warfare. We cannot afford in the future, in perhaps more serious political

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crises, to scramble into impromptu covert operations as we did at the time of the Italian elections.66 There are different interpretations for the emergence of the terms ‘psychological’ and ‘political’ warfare. On the one hand it is suggested that the two terms are interchangeable. The CIA continued to refer to ‘psychological warfare’ but the PPS switched to the term ‘political warfare’ as a semantic device to emphasise its rightful authority over operations within the political domain.67 On the other hand, it is argued that these terms reflected important distinctions between the different types of activities envisaged by the CIA and the PPS. According to this view, the terms ‘psychological’ and ‘political’ warfare are not interchangeable but reflect divergent initiatives. The SPG’s ‘psychological’ programme to influence foreign public opinion was far more limited in scope than the expansive PPS proposal for ‘political’ interventions in hostile as well as friendly foreign nations.68 The PPS and the CIA certainly employed language to emphasise their respective agendas. But the NSC 10/2 debates reveal that the latter explanation is more accurate (that psychological and political warfare referred to distinctive programmes). This period witnessed a bureaucratic collision as the Planning Staff attempted to take over, within its own broad programme, the Agency’s authority to conduct psychological warfare under NSC 4-A. In fact the PPS regarded ‘psychological’ warfare as just one element within the much larger ‘political’ warfare field.

Administrative differences widen (the Director of Special Studies) The battle lines were swiftly drawn between the various protagonists once the PPS proposal was disseminated within the Truman administration. The NSC staff produced a draft directive based on the PPS’s recommendations to create the post of ‘Director of Special Studies’, which was to be nominated by the Secretary of State and appointed by the NSC with a full-time staff of four representatives assigned from the departments and the CIA. It would

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be the director’s responsibility to ‘arrange for the preparation, by his own staff or other agencies as appropriate, of plans for covert operations’. He would also be required to oversee operational planning and ‘arrange for their execution by appropriate agencies’. Military requirements to prepare the ‘organization, training, equipment and logistical support’ for wartime covert activities would also be addressed. Finally, the director must make certain that all ‘such covert activities are consistent with US foreign policies and overt activities’.69 The PPS felt strongly that the CIA’s leadership had neglected this responsibility during the SPG’s implementation of psychological warfare operations. Although Hillenkoetter, in historical accounts, has been maligned as a weak Director of Central Intelligence, he responded decisively to the Director of Special Studies memorandum because it clearly threatened to undercut the CIA’s assigned authority and responsibilities under NSC 4-A.70 ‘If it appears desirable, in the interest of national security, to designate an individual responsible for the planning and coordination of psychological warfare activities,’ Hillenkoetter informed Souers, then ‘this Agency feels the individual should be the present chief of current activities in that field.’ In other words, Cassady should retain his post. Hillenkoetter argued that the ‘existing operation and its liaison with the Department of State is handicapped only by the absence of a State Department officer having authority to represent the Department in regard to over-all policies’. The CIA had been prudent in continuing to liaise with the State Department, despite Kennan’s annoyance over Project ULTIMATE, as this enabled Hillenkoetter to portray the Agency as the voice of reason in its dispute with the PPS. Hillenkoetter also argued that if the existing arrangement needed to be overhauled then the NSC should [d]ivorce the existing covert psychological operations from the control and operation of CIA by the rescission of NSC 4-A and place it under the control and operation of a new Agency. Security in the conduct of this sensitive operation cannot be maintained except through control by one Agency.71

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Hillenkoetter consistently championed this fundamental principle over the coming weeks. The authority for covert operations should not be separated from the responsibility. It was a basic administrative necessity that Hillenkoetter should control the SPG’s operations. But there were tactical advantages to pursuing this line of argument. The State Department’s leadership was loath to assume full responsibility for covert operations, even though the PPS wanted to assert departmental authority over them. Therefore, if the principle of unified control and responsibility for political warfare was accepted by the Truman administration, a wedge would be driven between the PPS and Marshall and Lovett. The principle of combined authority and responsibility might also rally crucial bureaucratic allies within the government for the struggle ahead. In a second memorandum to Souers, Hillenkoetter emphasised the Agency’s rejection of the Director of Special Studies proposal. He strongly criticised the NSC staff’s recommendations as ‘a dangerous duplication of existing assigned functions’, although in reality the PPS proposal sought to expand the scope of operations currently being undertaken by the SPG. Hillenkoetter appealed for the rejection of the new directive on the grounds that ‘the present operations under NSC 4-A be not jeopardized’. Disruption of the existing programme was unnecessary, he said, because this Agency, acting under NSC 4-A, has made considerable strides in the subject field, has obligated itself to a considerable expenditure of funds for equipment, transportation, and experienced personnel, and has made firm commitments for clandestine operations outside the United States for a long period of time.72 The NSC staff revised the draft directive based on Hillenkoetter’s objections and transmitted it to NSC members and the CIA, where it once again received differing reactions. The new directive did not stray too far from the previous version, proposing that a Director of Special Studies be appointed as an intermediary between the CIA and the NSC. The director would have an advisory board at his disposal to

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provide greater interagency coordination of policies and operations, and to act as a forum to reconcile any differing departmental views that might emerge from time to time.73 The PPS responded positively to this proposed directive; Kennan commended its merits to Marshall and Lovett in a communique´ on 11 May, describing it as an ‘important matter’. According to Kennan, the proposal ‘is based largely on and adheres to the fundamental principles’ of the recent PPS paper. Kennan also highlighted that there was a ‘certain urgency’ to move forward with the programme because the ‘deadline we are working against is [. . .] the imminent adjournment of Congress’. The bureaucratic arrangements for the new directorate needed to be swiftly resolved so that funding could be secured before the congressional summer recess.74 Administrative rather than strategic factors called for haste. The CIA’s negative reaction to the latest draft directive revealed the gulf between it and the State Department. The Agency was now on the defensive, trying to protect its institutional integrity from the PPS’s bureaucratic encroachments. While Kennan drummed up support for the new programme from his superiors in the State Department, Hillenkoetter once again transmitted his objections to Souers at the NSC.75 The DCI reminded Souers that the CIA ‘has several times, during the discussion phases of this proposed directive, placed itself on record as opposed to the plan on which the proposed directive is based’. Hillenkoetter reiterated that this was mainly because the ‘proposed directive, if enacted, will establish a staff function providing for AUTHORITY in a delicate field of operation – without the RESPONSIBILITY’. In other words, control of the new programme would be transferred to departmental representatives while a separate organisation would be responsible for conducting operations. Rather than undermine the present arrangement, he advised that the ‘Agency again strongly urges that the provision of NSC 4-A, as written, be continued without change’. Hillenkoetter barely acknowledged the PPS position in his objections, implicitly indicating his view that its agenda was divisive. But he was also conciliatory, reassuring Souers that ‘if the National Security Council approves this draft of May 10 1948, the

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Central Intelligence Agency, of course, will cooperate to the best of its ability in an endeavour to make a going concern of the proposed Special Studies organization’.76

NSC 10 Two days later the NSC staff disseminated another revised draft entitled NSC 10 ‘Director of Special Studies’ to try to bridge the PPS– CIA divide. NSC 10 still favoured the PPS, but Kennan was not having things entirely his own way. This was partly because NSC 10 was also influenced by the view of a third group, the JCS. The position of the JCS was enshrined in SANACC 304/14, in which the establishment of a wartime ‘Psychological Warfare Organization’ was recommended. The State Department successfully rebuffed the latest military challenge through its NSC staff representative. Consequently, NSC 10 did not recommend creating a separate organisation, as advocated by the JCS. Taking into account the ‘similarity of operational methods involved in covert operations and covert intelligence activities’, the NSC staff instead proposed that the CIA was the ‘appropriate agency to conduct such operations’. The PPS’s views were also supported in the recommendation that the CIA’s propaganda activities and ‘other covert operations’ should be conducted under a Director of Special Studies. This would effectively remove the full authority of the DCI under NSC 4-A for such measures. NSC 10 reflected the NSC staff’s attempts to broach a compromise between three disparate viewpoints within the bureaucracy. As a result, the proposal ultimately pleased no one. PPS had more reason to approve NSC 10 than the Agency because it was largely based on its political warfare proposal and included the broader range of actions proposed by Kennan’s office. Furthermore, the plausible denial get-out clause was included to appease Marshall and Lovett, thus nullifying the opportunity to drive a wedge between the State Department’s senior officials and the PPS. The broad range of operations endorsed under NSC 10 was influenced not only by the PPS but by the military representatives on

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the NSC staff. The inclusion of wartime capabilities, including paramilitary and guerrilla warfare techniques, did not originate with the PPS and stretched its concept of supporting underground resistance movements in the Soviet bloc in peacetime. Hillenkoetter felt this was going too far, thus informing NSC members on 20 May that ‘the Director of Special Studies could not properly conduct sabotage and counter-sabotage’.77 The inclusion of an interpretation of political warfare that included paramilitary activities was extremely significant because the OPC’s broad operational mandate would eventually flow from this. NSC 10 failed to distinguish between peacetime and preparatory wartime operations, even though guerrilla warfare measures were not strictly envisaged at this stage for peacetime implementation. Furthermore, the distinction between peacetime ‘political’ and wartime ‘paramilitary’ operations was not clarified in the redrafts of NSC 10, as the NSC staff attempted to mediate the divergent wishes of the State Department, the CIA and the military. The NSC staff adopted an umbrella approach whereby the interests of each group were placed side-by-side in one directive. This tactic successfully overcame parochial differences and facilitated the enactment of a broad capability. But it held out the risk that aggressive and provocative paramilitary measures beyond the scope envisaged by the PPS could be activated in peacetime.78

Allen Dulles and the ISG’s interim report As the battle lines hardened between the PPS and the CIA, Allen Dulles intervened by submitting the ISG’s interim report to the NSC on 13 May.79 Although Dulles had met PPS members two weeks before and was kept informed of departmental views by James Lay and Robert Blum, he was in no way bound to the Planning Staff proposal.80 Dulles was a specialist in the covert political warfare field, gleaned from his wartime experience, who held independent, qualified opinions about the proper organisation of peacetime covert warfare activities. Despite his contact with the PPS, it was by no means inevitable that the ISG’s administrative recommendations

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would favour the State Department or impinge on the CIA’s authority. It has been suggested by one historian that Dulles and Kennan were ‘good friends’ and that Kennan’s cause was boosted by the ISG, which was ‘prejudiced’ against the Agency from the outset.81 In fact Dulles was much more likely to advocate a powerful centralised intelligence agency rather than a decentralised arrangement that would cede authority to the State Department. A powerful centralised operations agency, of course, would go far beyond Hillenkoetter’s limited vision of the CIA’s role. As Dulles made his recommendations, he was quietly entertaining thoughts of replacing Hillenkoetter as DCI, should Thomas Dewey win the upcoming November 1948 presidential election against Truman. Dulles therefore had a vested interest in the development of a strong, independent intelligence agency, not one emasculated by the State Department.82 The ISG’s recommendations were ambiguous and failed to perfectly suit either the PPS or the CIA. The Dulles report declared that the Director of Special Studies must be granted responsibility and authority for covert political warfare. Commenting on the provisions of NSC 10, the ISG stated that although a ‘central planning and coordinating staff, as proposed in the new plan, is essential’, it should be stressed that ‘the centralized control of operations is equally important’. It was a ‘delicate field’ and therefore ‘actual control’ as well as responsibility should be vested in the director, ‘who should be in intimate touch not only with plans and policies but also with the details of the operations’. This tallied with Hillenkoetter’s view, revisiting whether to separate or combine the responsibility and authority for covert operations. The Planning Staff scheme to exert authority over political warfare without assuming direct operational responsibility was anathema to Dulles because, as he stated in his report, ‘these types of operations can [not] be “farmed” out to various existing agencies of the Government without jeopardizing their effectiveness and involving serious security risks’. The Director of Special Studies must have supreme control over operations, alongside organisational responsibility to prevent ‘several unrelated and uncorrelated clandestine operations’ from being conducted ‘in such sensitive areas as those behind the iron curtain’.83

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Although the ISG report superficially favoured Hillenkoetter’s position, it did not specify which organisation should be granted full authority and responsibility for covert political warfare. Moreover, Dulles sided with the PPS in advocating the expansion of psychological warfare into a political warfare capability. He did not wholeheartedly rally to the Agency’s side, because of lingering doubts over its incumbent leadership. Dulles nonetheless championed the principle, contrary to the PPS view, that these functions must be integrated within one organisation. Dulles also felt that political warfare and secret intelligence should be housed under the same roof. This actually introduced a new threat to the CIA. If the NSC implemented Dulles’ recommendation to combine political warfare and secret intelligence in one organisation, but at the same time doubted the Agency’s ability to fulfil these roles, there was a real danger that the CIA might be emasculated not only of its psychological warfare capability but also its secret intelligence mission. This was a fundamental threat to the Agency’s operational mandate, and by extension its very existence. But the ISG report did not deliver a knock-out blow. Dulles left moot whether the Agency should be assigned both functions, or whether its secret intelligence capability should be removed and placed in a new organisation along with covert political warfare.84 The PPS now took stock of the ISG’s findings and attempted to draw closer to Dulles. Kennan hoped to use the ISG report to his advantage by exploiting Dulles’ reputation as a political warfare expert. Kennan informed Marshall and Lovett that ‘Dulles hits the organizational problem head on’ by proposing that secret intelligence and covert operations should either be placed under a Director of Special Studies separate from the CIA or with both functions assigned to the authority of the Agency. Organisationally, Kennan argued, placing the new director under the CIA would be the ideal solution, both ‘for cover and intelligence reasons’. But the PPS had been stung by the CIA’s defiance and was determined that it would not be granted authority over its own political warfare project. So Kennan declared that ‘in respect both to personalities and organization’ it would be better at this point ‘to let the CIA

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sleeping dog lie’. This could be done by creating ‘a separate organization [. . .] which might at a later date be incorporated in CIA’ after Hillenkoetter had stood down.85 Kennan also told Marshall and Lovett that the implications of the two alternative arrangements suggested by the ISG ‘are so far-reaching that I think they should be discussed by you and Mr. Forrestal rather than in the lower levels of the NSC’. Unlike Dulles, who left the question open, Kennan wanted to head off any preference that Marshall and Lovett might entertain for unifying secret intelligence and covert political warfare within the CIA. Kennan recommended the alternative course of placing secret intelligence alongside political warfare in a separate organisation. As a final parting shot at Hillenkoetter, Kennan suggested that if Marshall, Lovett and Forrestal did not favour the creation of a new agency then they should either invite Dulles to ‘replace Hillenkoetter as Director of CIA, with covert operations under him’, or authorise Dulles to ‘assume directorship of covert operations and secret intelligence under Hillenkoetter’.86 These recommendations were made just one day before NSC members were due to discuss NSC 10. Kennan was attempting to align the PPS and ISG before a decision was taken by the council. The ISG report and NSC 10 were both placed before the council for discussion on 20 May, but Lovett requested that more time be given to consider the proposals. Lovett firmly opposed Secretary Royall’s suggestion that the Agency should conduct the expanded political warfare programme to avoid any ‘duplication’ of the CIA’s work. Lovett explained that he was ‘afraid that if CIA undertook to conduct these covert operations, the Congress might be afraid that it was becoming a Gestapo’. This was a curious argument that did not explain the PPS’s opposition to CIA authority over political warfare. Lovett was possibly out of touch with the dispute, but in any case he continued to tow the PPS line by informing the NSC that the State Department objected to Agency authority. Lovett also attempted to fend off JCS encroachments on the State Department’s peacetime policymaking jurisdiction. The council would shortly receive the views of the JCS on the political warfare question. Lovett urged that ‘it must be remembered that we are not talking about

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wartime activities but rather about activities to be conducted at the present time’. The dilemma was that ‘the covert operations were of a type which the State Department could not conduct’.87 This was an awkward problem: on one hand the PPS wanted to prevent a rival from controlling its political warfare programme, but on the other hand the department’s intrinsic aversion to operational responsibility still stood. For the PPS, the solution was to place responsibility in an external organisation over which the State Department would quietly exercise direct authority. The NSC deferred the matter for further consideration, given the divergent and complex arguments of the main protagonists. This delay exasperated the PPS and compelled it to modify its priorities. Whereas the Agency was simply defending its existing authorities, the PPS was now on the offensive. But the PPS was also working against the congressional deadline to bring in a new programme. Facing bureaucratic stalemate, the PPS decided to pursue a compromise arrangement to ensure that congressional funding would be secured. With a new strategy in place, Butler informed Lovett that ‘early action’ by the NSC was desirable because ‘NSC 10 constitutes a very important proposal’.88 Even though Kennan was occupied with official speech-writing duties, he also found time to write to Lovett to press home the importance of this project, barely masking his frustration at the red tape that was delaying quick action: We are concerned here in the Staff about the political warfare question. If the Executive Branch does not act soon to firm up its ideas as to what should be done along these lines, the possibility of getting secret funds out of Congress for covert operations will be lost. If this is not done now, it will mean that this Government has given up hope of conducting effective political warfare activities for the duration of this administration.89 The Planning Staff’s priority had now shifted away from securing its optimal arrangement for political warfare. It was much more important to push through a compromise before the congressional deadline for financing the programme expired. Once a formal

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agreement had been adopted and funds had been appropriated by Congress, then the department could broker de facto arrangements to assert its control over the new programme. With considerable bitterness, Kennan advised Lovett that if ‘nothing is done along the lines recommended in NSC 10’, then the department should ‘press for the abrogation of NSC 4-A, which is not working out well’.90

Hillenkoetter’s compromise proposal Despite Kennan’s angst it was the Agency that really stood to lose out over the political warfare dispute, making Hillenkoetter amenable to compromise. Thus Hillenkoetter put forward a new proposal that he ambitiously hoped would ‘overcome almost all of the objections raised, and I believe it would be in consonance with the Dulles– Jackson– Correa paper and would satisfy the State Department’s demands for a directing hand in what forms of propaganda are to be used and what underground resistance movements are to be supported’. He believed that his plan would also comply with NSC 4-A, the wishes of the military secretaries and the JCS, and with ‘the intent of Congress’. This was a bold statement, but Hillenkoetter’s hopes of transcending the increasingly acrimonious split within the bureaucracy seriously underestimated the Planning Staff’s determination to get its own way. Hillenkoeter proposed that the CIA should still conduct peacetime operations under NSC 4-A, with the addition of ‘a high level liaison officer for covert operations’ assigned from the State Department. ‘This officer’, Hillenkoetter suggested, ‘should be of sufficient stature to have the authority to pass on the forms of propaganda to be employed and to tell the Central Intelligence Agency that it is the policy of the United States to support such-andsuch an underground or resistance movement and to deny such support to another underground or resistance movement.’ According to Hillenkoetter it was the ‘lack of any such liaison with authority’ that had ‘really caused the present discussions’. In reality the provision of a high-level departmental liaison officer would not assuage the PPS’s appetite to control peacetime covert operations.

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Unlike NSC 10, Hillenkoetter’s proposal explicitly divided covert political warfare between wartime and peacetime measures. In so doing, Hillenkoetter accepted that the SPG’s current campaign under NSC 4-A would be expanded, although it would remain primarily a psychological warfare programme. Peacetime operations, he suggested, would ‘involve black propaganda, including morale subversion, assistance to underground movements, and support of resistance movements’. Hillenkoetter defined all other measures as ‘positive operations’ that ‘it is very obvious that the United States would not perform except in relation to war or when war was so close that it was felt it could not be avoided’. These activities would include ‘sabotage, anti-sabotage, demolition, subversion against hostile states, guerrilla support, and evacuation’. Separating peacetime and wartime operations, Hillenkoetter argued, was logical because ‘it is very difficult to believe that we would send in parties to accomplish physical destruction in any phase of a “cold” war’. In order to meet the concerns of the JCS expressed in the SANACC 304 series, ‘planning’ for wartime operations should begin immediately ‘by a committee under the Joint Chiefs of Staff, with members from the Armed Services and the Central Intelligence Agency’. To placate State Department fears of military encroachment on its peacetime primacy, Hillenkoetter noted that ‘only “planning” is to be done now for this second group of operations’. In the event of war, the organisation within the CIA conducting covert operations ‘should be lifted bodily’ from it and placed under the JCS.91 But Hillenkoetter’s attempted mediation of the political warfare dispute was flawed, because the State Department was determined not to allow the status quo under NSC 4-A to continue. Furthermore, Hillenkoetter misjudged the misgivings that many within the administration felt towards his own leadership.

The Lovett –Forrestal –Dulles meeting: an alternative to NSC 10 Several days later, a meeting was convened in Forrestal’s Pentagon office, where an alternative arrangement was suggested from which

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the final political warfare directive took its basic shape. Forrestal, Lovett, Dulles, Blum, Hillenkoetter and General Gruenther (for the JCS) were in attendance. In the first part of the meeting Hillenkoetter reviewed his compromise proposal, before Gruenther took to the floor to summarise the JCS attitude towards the peacetime organisation of political warfare. The JCS favoured ‘in principle’ the CIA conducting secret intelligence and covert operations, although they ‘had questions as to the CIA’s ability to handle this task’. To assuage their concerns, Gruenther asked Hillenkoetter if the Agency would accept an advisory panel to assist in its execution of covert operations. Hillenkoetter accepted a panel arrangement, but only on the basis that it would provide advice and not ‘management’.92 Hillenkoetter was excluded from the rest of the Pentagon meeting, in which an alternative to NSC 10 and his compromise proposal were discussed. The agreement thrashed out by Lovett and Forrestal, with Dulles in attendance, was actually the least preferable to the PPS of the three alternatives that Kennan had suggested to Lovett and Marshall nine days earlier. Lovett and Forrestal concluded that responsibility for both secret intelligence and secret operations should be assigned to the CIA. However, several provisions would ensure that the authority for the new operations did not rest with the DCI. First, Lovett and Forrestal agreed that Galloway should be replaced. The OSO’s current head was loyal to Hillenkoetter, not the departments. Under the new settlement this post would assume responsibility for both espionage and political warfare. In a further blow to the Agency, it was agreed that the new political warfare and secret intelligence organisation ‘should have considerable autonomy within CIA, and its head should be authorized to appeal directly to the National Security Council in case of differences arising between him and the Director of Central Intelligence’.93 The man that the PPS had in mind for the role was Allen Dulles. He was offered the job there and then, even though no formal council directive had yet been approved. But Dulles was reluctant to commit his services to the Truman administration when the position he really coveted, Hillenkoetter’s directorship, could become available after the upcoming presidential election.

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Although the CIA was cut out of the Lovett– Forrestal deal, the agreement indicated the PPS’s new willingness to compromise. On the surface this arrangement gave the CIA responsibility and partial authority for covert political warfare while allowing it to retain its secret intelligence capability. In practice, the political warfare organisation would be housed within the CIA, but it would be independent of it and headed by Marshall’s man, not Hillenkoetter’s.

The Special Services Unit The decision reached at the Lovett – Forrestal–Dulles meeting to bypass Hillenkoetter’s proposal was confirmed when Souers submitted another alternative to NSC 10 to the council on 2 June. The new paper proposed to create a ‘Special Services Unit’ within the CIA, reporting that it ‘seems desirable, for legal, as well as operational reasons, not to create a new agency for covert political activities, but to place the responsibility for this work within the legal structure of the Central Intelligence Agency and closely relate it to secret intelligence’.94 In other words, the CIA’s flexible secret intelligence mandate would now also provide it with the legal authority to undertake political warfare. The Agency accepted the covert political warfare assignment alongside secret intelligence as long as it maintained the authority under NSC 4-A to control these operations. But the Special Services Unit proposal did not provide this, instead recommending the withdrawal of Hillenkoetter’s control over the Agency’s espionage capability. The chief of the new unit would be selected from outside the Agency by the NSC, and would have ‘access’ to and receive ‘policy guidance’ from the departments rather than the CIA. The new office would also enjoy ‘a considerable measure of autonomy within the CIA’.95 The idea was for the Agency to provide cover for the political warfare organisation, shielding it from prying eyes, but the CIA would not exercise direct authority over its personnel or operations. Two reasons were given for extricating the Agency’s authority over covert political warfare and secret intelligence. First, doubt still existed ‘as to whether CIA is presently so constituted that it can

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effectively handle this problem which is so different from CIA’s primary task of coordinating intelligence activities and correlating and evaluating intelligence relating to the national security’. Second, there was also the ‘fear lest covert operations develop in a manner inconsistent with our foreign and military policies’. Given that the Agency had been competently running secret intelligence since July 1946, the real motivation behind the new proposal was to wrest the authority provided by NSC 4-A from the Agency and place it within the departments.96 To ensure that departmental wishes were observed, the PPS recommended to Marshall and Lovett that the NSC directive to formalise the Lovett – Forrestal deal should be drawn up ‘in the first instance by a representative to be designated by the Secretary and one to be designated by Mr. Forrestal’.97 By the time the council met again on 3 June, the Lovett – Forrestal proposal had overtaken NSC 10. Lovett hoped it constituted ‘a possible method of meeting the problem to enable the Council to move rapidly in getting the necessary [congressional] funds’. But, unsurprisingly, Hillenkoetter felt aggrieved that the new plan undermined the Agency’s present authority. Hillenkoetter issued a firm rebuttal, contesting each offending provision individually. He defended the Agency against the Lovett – Forrestal paper’s ‘principal objection’ that questioned whether the CIA ‘could handle this job’. The DCI retorted that ‘no protest or doubts had been expressed up to the present’. He opposed changing the current chain of command between himself and Galloway’s office, pointing out that the OSO was ‘practically autonomous’ already. He also contested the right of the chief of the new organisation to appeal over the DCI’s views directly to the NSC. In Hillenkoetter’s view this procedure was ‘totally wrong’; he won support on this point from Secretary Royall and the chairman of the National Security Resources Board Arthur M. Hill. Royall stated that ‘if you gave a man responsibility, you should give him the full authority to run it’. Hillenkoetter referred to the DCI’s authority under NSC 4-A as the precedent for him to give the chief of the new unit the ‘necessary policy guidance’. He also defended his current head of the SPG, Cassady, who had been highly recommended by William Donovan and David Bruce from their

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wartime service in the OSS, although he probably did not realise that Galloway’s position was also under threat. The arrangements suggested by Lovett and Forrestal threatened to strip the Agency of direct authority over its operating arm. Hillenkoetter inevitably bristled at this attack. Lovett and Forrestal did not attempt to extensively answer each one of the DCI’s objections. Instead they spoke in general terms about the proposed new operations as ‘a specialized extra curricular activity’ that should be separated along with secret intelligence and psychological warfare from the Agency’s ‘coordinating and evaluating functions’. Lovett continued to press for a semi-autonomous office within the CIA with a ‘direct channel to State for policy guidance’. Such an arrangement would enable the State Department to direct political warfare while avoiding ‘any part in the conduct of the covert operations’. As the lengthy and rather bitter meeting lurched towards stalemate, Hillenkoetter seemingly won an important concession from Lovett. Aware that ‘if funds are to be obtained, the NSC must move quickly’ Lovett therefore proposed that ‘all authority would be vested in the head of CIA’. A departmental ‘advisory panel’ could be established, modelled on the Intelligence Advisory Committee (IAC), ‘which could report directly to the NSC if they disagreed with Admiral Hillenkoetter’. With agreement reached on this principle, it was decided that the NSC staff would prepare a substitute paper to NSC 10 in light of this discussion.98 Hillenkoetter had successfully defended the principle of Agency authority over the new Special Services Unit, but this would count for nothing unless it was explicitly written into the provisions of the new directive to prevent the departments from riding roughshod over the CIA’s authority. Even this would not necessarily avert departmental attempts to exert de facto authority over Agency operations once the new directive was approved and implemented. The resulting memorandum produced by the NSC staff inauspiciously signalled that the new draft directive would favour departmental interests over Agency objections. The ‘new special services unit to be created in CIA’ was to have responsibility for both secret intelligence and secret operations but it would also enjoy ‘a

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considerable measure of autonomy’ from the Agency. Galloway and Cassady would still be replaced, although their ‘highly qualified’ successor might now be ‘recruited from inside or outside the present ranks of CIA’. This was a minor concession, because the nomination would be approved by the NSC, a body dominated by the departments. Emphasis was placed on the departments’ right to full access to the new unit to provide it with ‘policy guidance’, thus implicitly chipping away at the DCI’s authority.99

From Office of Special Services to Office of Special Projects On 7 June the Council Secretariat’s Office distributed a draft directive to the principals based on Hillenkoetter’s proposal, plus a few revisions. Although this paper incorporated the expansive definition of ‘covert operations’ favoured by the departments (and failed to separate peacetime and wartime measures, as previously proposed by Hillenkoetter), its administrative provisions were satisfactory to the DCI. Hillenkoetter was willing to accept an expanded operational role for the Agency, as he had been in the buildup to NSC 4-A. The factors that conditioned his acceptance of the new directive, therefore, were administrative in nature. He remained adamant that the Agency must retain authority over any operations it was given responsibility to undertake. The latest draft directive assigned this authority to the DCI. It borrowed much of its language from NSC 4-A and the Lovett– Forrestal proposal. Unlike the 4 June summary, it generally assuaged the Agency’s concerns over the new administrative set-up. For legal and operational reasons, secret intelligence and political warfare would be placed in a ‘new Office of Special Services’ within the CIA and ‘overall control’ would be assigned to the DCI, not the departments. The new political warfare office would have ‘a considerable measure of autonomy within the Central Intelligence Agency’, but this provision was established ‘for security reasons’ rather than to surreptitiously channel the DCI’s authority to the departments. An interdepartmental ‘Operations Advisory Committee’ would ‘assist’ rather than direct the DCI. Galloway and Cassady would still be replaced, but the

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new chief could be recruited from within or outside the CIA and would be nominated by the DCI rather than the departments. His choice would still be subject to the council’s final approval.100 Inevitably, any arrangement that satisfied the CIA was unpalatable to the PPS. Kennan immediately informed Lovett that the new directive was unacceptable. In Kennan’s opinion, the project ‘emanates largely from the initiative’ of the Planning Staff and therefore the proposed political warfare campaign, he said, ‘must be done under the intimate direction and control of this Department’. The new draft directive, argued Kennan, ‘does not appear to us to meet this need’. If the State Department could not overcome CIA opposition to its rightful authority, then the ‘heavy decision’ must be taken, said Kennan, to ‘withdraw this paper entirely and to give up at this time the idea of attempting to conduct political warfare’. The intractable CIA should also be put in its place, according to Kennan, with the ‘cancellation of NSC 4, which is not operating satisfactorily’.101 Despite Kennan’s surly reaction to the latest draft directive, an opportunity to outmanoeuvre the CIA soon presented itself. Just as the 7 June paper was being disseminated, the NSC staff met to revise the directive based on the previous NSC paper opposed by the Agency. This meant that the Agency was now effectively excluded from the drafting process. This paper was referred to the NSC consultants, including Kennan, who made several revisions that were ‘intolerable’ to the Agency. The Secretary of State rather than the DCI would nominate the head of the new unit, now renamed the ‘Office of Special Projects’ (OSP), so long as this choice was ‘acceptable’ to the DCI and approved by the council. The language of the revised draft directive was also ambiguous in asserting the DCI’s authority over the new organisation.102 Despite feeling the full weight of departmental pressure to accept this unsatisfactory arrangement, Hillenkoetter continued to stand his ground. On 9 June he addressed two letters to the council secretariat and council members. Exasperated by the latest twist, he informed Souers and Lay that ‘since State evidently will not go along with CIA operating this political warfare thing in any sane or sound manner’

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the department should run it and ‘let it have no connection at all with us’. Hillenkoetter believed that combining departmental control and responsibility seemed to be the only way to broach the bureaucratic impasse that had hampered a workable arrangement ever since the drafting of NSC 4-A: It seems to me that this is the only thing that will satisfy State in any way and rather than try to keep a makeshift in running order, subject to countless restrictions which can only lead to continued bickering and argument, I think maybe the best idea is to go back and make the OSP work for State alone. In the space of 24 hours, Kennan and Hillenkoetter both suggested that a resolution was impossible due to the other’s stubbornness. Yet neither side formally recommended terminating the directive. Kennan’s internal communique´ to Lovett was immediately rescinded when he realised that he could influence the draft in his capacity as an NSC consultant. Hillenkoetter in turn made his own plea privately to Souers and Lay, borne out of aggravation, to recognise the irrationality of departmental behaviour. The DCI explained to Souers and Lay that the letter was for their own information and that it ‘need not be forwarded’ to the council members. Hillenkoetter’s second letter to the council indicated that he was still willing to fight for Agency control over political warfare. This letter omitted his infuriated recommendation to withdraw Agency involvement altogether. Instead he once again laid out the CIA’s objections to the latest proposal that was ‘considered much weaker and less satisfactory’ than the previous draft. Hillenkoetter remained combative, concluding that ‘either the National Security Council has confidence in the operation of the Office of Special Projects by the Central Intelligence Agency or it has not’. He therefore laid down two straightforward alternatives. ‘If such confidence exists’, then the CIA ‘should be directed to operate the new office subject to a general declaration of policy by the National Security Council.’ On the other hand, if doubt existed over the CIA’s ability to control political warfare then it ‘should not be expected or directed to operate the Office of

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Special Operations in any manner’. This was effectively an ultimatum to the NSC. Either give full authority and responsibility for political warfare to the DCI or remove all Agency connections to the new programme.103 In light of Hilenkoetter’s latest criticisms, the draft directive was yet again referred back to NSC consultants. Hillenkoetter expected the imminent removal of the DCI’s operational authority and directed Cassady to wrap up all ‘irrevocable’ SPG commitments and not to commence any new operations.104 The administrative dispute was now directly disrupting Washington’s covert psychological warfare campaign in Europe. Over the next week a compromise draft was finally moulded that incorporated features acceptable to the departments and the Agency. In his capacity as an NSC consultant, Kennan was intimately involved in this work. But faced by tenacious Agency resistance Kennan backed down, opting to compromise over the directive for the greater cause of procuring congressional funds to initiate the programme. This was a pragmatic, tactical decision. Kennan deferred establishing the State Department’s primacy over political warfare until after a directive had been approved by the NSC. It was not a capitulation to the Agency’s viewpoint, suggesting that their differences would persist even after the adoption of a political warfare directive. On 14 June the ‘10/2 Panel’ was established, formalising that a representative for the Secretary of State (Kennan) and the Secretary of Defense (Joseph McNarney) would provide the new OSP with policy guidance.105 Souers distributed the new directive, NSC 10/1, to the NSC members the next day, before its consideration at the council meeting scheduled for 17 June. The new version maintained that responsibility for ‘covert operations’ should be assigned to the newly created OSP and placed ‘within the structure of the Central Intelligence Agency’. The DCI’s authority was maintained with the stipulation that the ‘Chief of the Office of Special Projects shall report directly to the Director of Central Intelligence’. However, ambiguity still existed over the extent of the DCI’s control over the OSP. This was for two reasons: first, NSC 10/1 asserted that the OSP ‘shall operate independently of other components’ of the Agency. Second,

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the provisions for the ‘Operations Advisory Committee’ (the ‘10/2 Panel’) were substantially beefed up, muddling the chain of command from the OSP chief to the DCI and the departmental representatives.106

The final phase – redrafting NSC 10/1 On 16 June, Kennan transmitted his begrudging approval of NSC 10/1 to his departmental superiors. Although it was by no means perfect, Kennan accepted that the plan should be accepted as it was ‘probably the best arrangement we can get at this time’ to ensure that ‘some funds be obtained from Congress this year for minor activities of this nature’. Before reluctantly endorsing NSC 10/1, Kennan tetchily expressed his doubts that ‘this arrangement will meet the more important needs of this Government for the conduct of political warfare’. The draft directive, he said, ‘draws too sharp a distinction between operations and planning’ and is ‘too remote from the conduct of foreign policy’. His real gripe was that the PPS had failed to assert de jure authority over political warfare. The Secretary of State was charged with appointing the director of the OSP, but Kennan grumbled that ‘we will not be likely to find a suitable person to head it’.107 He continued to blame the CIA for what he saw as the failure to organise appropriate administrative arrangements for political warfare. Frustrated, Kennan claimed that the Agency’s obstinacy had caused the ‘suitable person’ – Allen Dulles – to reject the offer to head the new political warfare organisation, although Dulles was actually working to his own agenda. The pivotal NSC meeting was held on 17 June when agreement was reached over NSC 10/1. The terms of the final provisions swung once again in favour of the Agency. During the course of the discussion, it was decided that paragraph 3d of NSC 10/1 – establishing the interdepartmental Operations Advisory Committee – should be removed. This was a significant step towards granting the DCI genuine authority over covert political warfare. The departmental representatives on the committee had been afforded broad powers to

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plan operations and supply policy guidance under the provisions in NSC 10/1. Hillenkoetter recognised that this could provide them with a direct channel that would undermine his authority should disagreements develop between them. The recommendation to drop the committee mechanism came not from Hillenkoetter but from the military, in a manner reminiscent of the final drafting phase of NSC 4-A when Secretary of State Marshall had ceded this provision. Army Secretary Royall and Air Force Secretary Symington now forcefully argued against any military responsibility for peacetime operations, negating the need for military representation on the Operations Advisory Committee. The committee concept was dependent on joint interdepartmental representation, so it became obsolete without military participation. Souers and Lovett both protested, with Lovett arguing that ‘we would only be kidding ourselves if we think that either the political or military agencies can be relieved of the responsibility’ for engaging in the political warfare programme. Lovett and Souers favoured the committee concept to safeguard departmental coordination and the overseeing of political warfare alongside the CIA’s control. Lovett understood that military participation on the committee would be nominal in peacetime, but without token military representation the State Department would be denied its own channel into the OSP. Despite Lovett’s best efforts, however, Royall and Symington could not be persuaded and the concept of the Operations Advisory Committee was scrapped.108 Hillenkoetter had seemingly won a major battle in absentia. The cancellation of the Operations Advisory Committee swung the balance of power back in the DCI’s favour. It was ironic but also logical that in the end a significant element of the long-running CIA–PPS dispute was resolved without the involvement of either chief protagonist, Kennan or Hillenkoetter.

An uneasy compromise: approval of NSC 10/2 In its final form NSC 10/2 was an uneasy compromise between the CIA and PPS. Their divergent viewpoints had not been successfully

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mediated, meaning that administrative wrangling would persist when it came to implementing the directive. For the Agency, the main danger was that the PPS would reinterpret the administrative provisions in order to bypass CIA control over political warfare when it came to determining the working arrangements for planning and guiding operations. The Planning Staff, for its part, had accepted that it must bide its time in order to direct the new political warfare programme. The final directive was approved and disseminated on 18 June as NSC 10/2. It embodied a balance between the PPS’s wishes, the recommendations of the ISG, and the CIA’s objections, while also incorporating elements of JCS proposals for wartime preparation. Richard Helms was scathing in his assessment of NSC 10/2 as a ‘lame compromise’ that was ‘most heavily influenced by the reluctance of the State and Defense Departments to give the upstart CIA any more responsibility than it already had’.109 The hodgepodge effort to appease all for the sake of acceptance resulted in NSC 10/2 leaving ambiguous the administrative arrangements it was meant to clarify.110 Considerable doubt remained as to how the political warfare provisions would be interpreted and implemented, because the final directive failed to resolve the main sources of tension. This was brushed under the carpet so that the political warfare programme could at least be initiated. NSC 10/2 recycled much of the language from NSC 4-A, which it now superseded. The new directive asserted that ‘taking cognizance of the vicious covert activities of the USSR, its satellite countries and Communist groups to discredit and defeat the aims and activities of the United States and other Western powers’, it was essential ‘in the interests of world peace and US national security’ to supplement ‘overt foreign activities’ with covert operations. It stated that for ‘operational reasons’ – given the Agency’s secret intelligence expertise – a new organisation should not be created to undertake these activities. Instead, responsibility for peacetime covert political warfare operations would be placed ‘within the structure of the Central Intelligence Agency’. For reasons of ‘security’ and ‘flexibility’

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the new unit ‘shall operate independently of other components of Central Intelligence Agency’. Souers apparently approved of the OSP’s ‘special position’ to ensure that it was not ‘hampered by other components of the Agency’. Hillenkoetter took a more cynical view, shaped by his protracted feud with the PPS. He anticipated that the departments would take advantage of the DCI’s ‘incomplete powers’ in order to intrude on his authority. A convoluted procedure for nominating the head of the new office was indicative of the desperate balancing act that NSC 10/2 attempted to perform between the departments and the CIA. The new OSP chief would be ‘nominated by the Secretary of State, acceptable to the Director of Central Intelligence and approved by the National Security Council’.111 Although some ambiguous provisions appeared to suit departmental interests, NSC 10/2 also ostensibly strengthened the DCI’s position. For instance, secret intelligence and covert political warfare were explicitly placed ‘under the over-all control of the Director of Central Intelligence’. This was a crucial victory for the Agency for two reasons. First, the CIA’s future as an operating agency was assured and proposals to remove its secret intelligence capability – questioned by the ISG and advocated by Forrestal and the PPS – had been repelled. Second, the DCI was assigned de jure authority for the expanded covert political warfare programme. Again, efforts to separate responsibility for political warfare from authority had been successfully repulsed. In other words, the PPS desire to control the new political warfare programme without having to be officially accountable for it had been thwarted. But this remained a central objective for the PPS, so it remained to be seen whether the State Department would accept a diminished ‘advisory’ role once operations were launched. The Operations Advisory Committee was replaced with a general provision that made it the DCI’s responsibility to ensure that ‘covert operations are planned and conducted in a manner consistent with US foreign and military policies and with overt activities’. The DCI was responsible for ensuring that the CIA’s operations were compatible with general policy ‘through designated representatives of the

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Secretary of State and of the Secretary of Defense’.112 This provided the military with the diminished peacetime role preferred by Royall and Symington. However, clashes between the departmental representatives and the DCI would still be referred to the NSC where departmental influence outweighed that of the Agency. It seemed all but certain that the PPS would not accept a diminished role – as Kennan was appointed the Secretary of State’s representative for political warfare in August.113 On top of administrative ambiguity, residual operational uncertainty was created by the language in NSC 10/2 because peacetime and wartime measures were not clearly demarcated. Covert political warfare was defined expansively, without any distinction made between peacetime and wartime measures: [. . .] such operations shall include any covert activities related to: propaganda; economic warfare; preventative direct action, including sabotage, anti-sabotage, demolition and evacuation measures; subversion against hostile states, including assistance to underground resistance movements, guerrillas and refugee liberation groups, and support of indigenous anti-communist elements in threatened countries of the free world.114 This broad mandate derived from the failure to specifically address JCS concerns over the creation of a wartime psychological warfare organisation.115 As a result, wartime ‘covert’ measures were stitched into the directive alongside peacetime political warfare measures, without any explicit differentiation between the two types of activity. A fundamental strategic flaw was also written into the directive. NSC 10/2 stipulated that these operations must remain covert so that the Truman administration would be able to ‘plausibly disclaim’ a connection to the breath-taking range of offensive activities that had been officially sanctioned. As Helms observes, it ‘seems impossible that the paramilitary activity authorized in the OPC charter could be carried out in a manner that could plausibly be denied by the President, but I do not recall any serious challenges to this instruction at the time’.116 The principle of plausible deniability, rooted in

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Marshall’s anxieties about tarnishing the official image of US foreign policy, was not only ludicrous in relation to the more conspicuous operations under consideration. It would also be a restricting factor on the scale and effectiveness of the future US political warfare campaign against the Soviet bloc, undermining the feasibility of the programme. ‘Covert’ operations would have to remain small-scale to retain their cover. But limited actions of this type would be totally ineffective against the formidable secret police systems ensconced behind the iron curtain. ***** The shift from NSC 4-A to NSC 10/2 constituted a lengthy and divisive bureaucratic conflict within the Truman administration. The delay in adopting NSC 10/2 was not caused by strategic or operational considerations but by the fragmented administrative interests and agendas of disparate groups within Washington’s national security apparatus. Organisational authority and responsibility over the proposed new programme lay at the heart of this, undercutting a considered and detailed debate on the strategic basis for the actual operations. After several acrimonious months, all interested parties were compelled to accept compromises that balanced their standpoints in the final directive. But the divergent views of each side were not reconciled by NSC 10/2. The first wave of the PPS assault was repelled by the CIA’s bureaucratic defences, personified by Hillenkoetter’s fortitude in the face of overwhelming departmental adversity. But NSC 10/2 was not an outright administrative victory for the Agency. PPS shifted tactics in its siege of the CIA citadel, accepting an unsatisfactory ‘interim’ arrangement under NSC 10/2 for the sake of initiating its political warfare programme. Once the OPC was up and running, the State Department would be able to pull rank and assert greater direct influence on operations. The PPS knew it possessed a Trojan Horse capable of bypassing the defences of its obstinate opponent.

CHAPTER 3 THE STRATEGIC DILEMMA: THE PURSUIT OF A SOVIET BLOC POLICY, TITOISM AND PROGRAM A, 1948—50

By the summer of 1948 the Truman administration had developed a strategic approach for Western Europe based on contributing to its economic recovery and political stability. But American efforts to overcome Western Europe’s difficulties accelerated the deterioration of its relations with the Soviet Union. Initially Washington heavily prioritised its policy towards Western Europe, reflecting that region’s geopolitical importance to the United States. The failure to develop a pan-European policy encompassing the East as well as the West signalled that Eastern Europe was of far less geopolitical significance to Washington. This also marked the limits of American power, because Soviet-communist primacy over Eastern Europe after World War II severely curtailed Washington’s influence in the region. US officials grew in confidence during 1948 about the strategic approach to Western Europe and the effectiveness of linking economic recovery to political reconstruction. Dean Acheson recollected that: ‘When I returned to office the surrounding gloom had deepened, or remained impenetrable in most areas, but in one at least, Western Europe, the Marshall Plan had brought the dawn of a revivification unparalleled in modern history.’1 Once Congress ratified the European Recovery Program in April 1948, US$13 billion of Marshall aid was

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delivered to Western Europe over the next four years, administered under the auspices of the Economic Cooperation Administration (ECA). The central aim was to rehabilitate the economies, political institutions and self-confidence of the governments and populations in Western Europe. The Truman administration also encouraged the post-war rapprochement of France and Germany towards this end. The creation of an independent and productive West German state at the heart of the continent’s economy became a central pillar of West European policy. US policy in Western Europe was supplemented from late 1947 with a series of overt and covert psychological warfare measures to deal with the perceived destabilising threat of insidious communist influence. The National Security Council eventually authorised a new psychological warfare capability in December 1947, giving particular emphasis to shoring up pro-Western elements in France, Italy and the Western occupation zones in Germany. The operations subsequently undertaken by the CIA’s Special Procedures Group were essentially defensive stop-gap measures to complement the overall aims of containment. During 1948 and 1949, the US looked to further strengthen the momentum of its Western European strategy beyond political and economic reconstruction. Washington at first supported and then advanced the military rearmament of the Western European nations, taking initial form in European capitals as the Brussels Pact. Catalysed by the Soviet blockade of Berlin in the summer of 1948, Western European military reconstruction was linked to the US with the commencement of the Washington security talks between July and September. This ultimately led to the adoption of the North Atlantic Treaty in April 1949, with congressional approval of the Mutual Defense Assistance Act in October. However, Washington’s strategic approach to Western Europe did not apply to Eastern Europe and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). As of June 1948, when NSC 10/2 was approved, the Truman administration had not formulated a strategy to give coherence to its dealings with the Soviet bloc nations. Beyond ideologically charged rhetoric about American aspirations for democracy and freedom in the region, no formal detailed policy aims had been defined. This exposed Washington’s failure to develop a unified European policy during 1947.

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The American approach in the West had not been linked to Eastern Europe. As a result, the relative success of Western containment generated problems for US aspirations in the East. Acheson was justifiably proud of the American programme for Western European recovery, but he also recognised that in the broader European context US policy ‘had intensified Soviet control of Eastern Europe and produced dangerous action further west, of which the most ominous was the blockade of Berlin’.2 Containment had compelled the Kremlin to consolidate its control over the Eastern bloc, in turn confirming the existence of rival spheres in Europe and the inception of the Cold War. A few scattered propaganda operations were launched by the SPG into Eastern Europe in the first half of 1948, even though no specific strategy towards the Soviet bloc had yet been developed. Priority had been given to Western European containment and, with progress in the West assured, some American policymakers now cast their eyes eastwards. They were immediately faced with the problem that Washington exercised so little geopolitical influence in the region. As a result, the State Department and the White House were obliged to conduct diplomacy with the Soviet bloc countries in an ad hoc manner, in particular through the ill-fated Council of Foreign Ministers (CFM) forum. No detailed attention was paid towards the development of a pan-European or Eastern European strategy, certainly not to the same extent as the formulation of Western European initiatives, including the ERP and the North Atlantic Treaty. From mid-1948 some officials in the State Department sought to address this strategic gap by conceptualising US policy towards Eastern Europe and the USSR. But the formulation of a coherent strategic approach towards the Soviet bloc prior to the outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950 was made problematic by the onset of the Cold War, which itself flowed in part from the American failure to establish a unified approach towards Europe.

The debates over Soviet bloc policy in 1948 In June 1948 the Office of Special Projects, soon renamed the Office of Policy Coordination, was created and an expansive peacetime covert

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political warfare capability was sanctioned by Truman’s NSC. Despite the adoption of NSC 10/2, the founding mission of the OPC lacked clarity. The directive authorised unconventional measures but it did not delineate the OPC’s objectives. Cold War activists such as OPC paramilitary operative Michael Burke believed they had been authorised ‘to turn loose among the chickens as many foxes as we could possibly get away with,’3 but no parameters or guidelines were established to fence in, organise or control the venture. In fact in mid-1948 the Truman administration did not even possess a formal policy position towards the Soviet Union. The first policy statement of this type was produced five months after the adoption of NSC 10/2 in November 1948. This meant that the OPC lacked guidelines to define its strategic objectives from the outset. The institutional feud that had raged in the build-up to the approval of NSC 10/2 had completely overshadowed the fundamental question of stipulating the OPC’s strategic objectives. The rhetoric in NSC 10/2 citing the ‘vicious covert activities’ of the Soviet bloc was similar in tone to a policy statement drawn up by the NSC staff in March 1948.4 In NSC 7 it was argued that the US must ‘take the lead in organizing a world-wide counter-offensive aimed at mobilizing and strengthening our own and anti-communist forces in the non-Soviet world, and at undermining the strength of the communist forces in the Soviet world’. The NSC staff recommended two particular methods to launch a ‘counter-offensive’ against the Soviet bloc. The US should intensify ‘the present anti-communist foreign information program’ and also ‘develop, and at the appropriate time carry out, a coordinated program to support underground resistance movements in countries behind the iron curtain, including the USSR’. Although these were extremely provocative suggestions, NSC 7 did not divulge the scope, nature or feasibility of success of these proposed actions.5 Regardless of the similar language employed in the two directives, the development of NSC 10/2 was not linked to NSC 7. The NSC staff paper was never formally adopted, and quickly faded from sight after the State Department raised objections to it; the NSC staff was unable to push the report through to the upper echelons for

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approval.6 Policymakers were at that time focused on challenging subversive and legal assertions of communist influence in Western Europe. No one within the cabinet, Policy Planning Staff or elsewhere took up the issues raised in NSC 7. Questions over general US foreign policy were also raised during the course of the dispute over NSC 10/2, although NSC 7 was not revisited. The timing was coincidental and the ensuing policy debate was not linked to the creation of the OPC. The impetus to clarify US policies originated with Secretary Forrestal but was borne out of functional rather than strategic concerns. In May 1948 Forrestal sought to justify the military budget for fiscal year 1950 through an expansive statement of American policy needs and objectives. His call for a policy review was set against the backdrop of Truman’s attempts to slash federal spending, including the imposition of a defencebudget ceiling of US$15 billion.7 The emergent crisis in Berlin prompted Forrestal to invigorate his budgetary claims by pressing the administration to accept more costly military expenditures than those currently stipulated by the White House. Writing to Truman in July, Forrestal explained that ‘the preparation of realistic budget estimates and final decisions concerning the size of the national budget, and its relative emphasis on different projects’ should be founded on a re-evaluation of US foreign policy in light of the Cold War.8 Forrestal hoped that an initial defence review titled NSC 20 – calling for higher military strength levels – would be endorsed by the State Department.9 Forrestal’s request prompted a policy review in the State Department from mid-to-late 1948. Although this was an opportunity to tie the OPC into a broader evaluation of American policy, no effort was made to do so. Secretary of State Marshall ordered the PPS to respond to Forrestal. The Planning Staff had been established by Marshall a year earlier for just this sort of role. Future Secretary of State Dean Acheson asserted that under Kennan and Paul Nitze ‘the staff was of inestimable value as the stimulator, and often deviser, of the most basic policies’.10 Not only was it the principal source of government policies, Kennan’s Planning Staff was also the main architect of the political warfare programme under NSC 10/2. Kennan and his team were now

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advocating ‘the maneuvering of Russian power back into the Russian border’ through the coordinated mobilisation of measures short of war.11 They therefore missed an opportunity to link US covert activities to a strategic framework encompassing Western Europe and the Soviet bloc. But instead of seizing the opportunity to carve out a dynamic European strategy, Kennan – in contrast to his historical reputation as a vigorous foreign policy strategist – dragged his heels. Kennan chose to focus narrowly on specific issues raised by Forrestal. He had little time for Forrestal’s agenda to justify a larger military budget by commandeering State Department support. Kennan instinctively opposed having to resolve abstract issues such as whether the US should prepare for an anticipated peak period of danger from the USSR or for a longer-term and more permanent state of readiness. He argued that over-reliance on policy papers by military planners was unwelcome as it risked generating strategic retrenchment and inflexibility. He complained to Marshall and Lovett that it was difficult to express the fluidity of the international situation and to reduce complexities into ‘either/or’ scenarios in basic policy estimates.12 Although this was a legitimate point, Kennan’s gripe masked a genuine requirement to resolve American strategic objectives towards the Soviet bloc before the launch of operations by the OPC. Historians blessed with hindsight run the risk of being overly critical of government practitioners. Nevertheless, the American approach towards the Soviet bloc in the late 1940s was fundamentally lacking on two levels. First, there was no cogent ‘grand strategy’ for the Cold War that would rationalise US policies – to delineate realistic aims that matched US capabilities and to unify and integrate the various policy components. Second, a unified grand strategy should have been linked to the more practical day-to-day operational requirements of the implementing agencies. Below the level of grand strategy, feasible objectives were required alongside a clear demarcation of the scope, range and nature of operations to be undertaken in the field. This dual requirement was non-existent when the NSC 20 series was developed in 1948. On 23 June, Kennan submitted a report,

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PPS/33, that responded to Forrestal’s request but fell well short of filling the strategic hole in the US approach to the Soviet bloc.13 PPS/33 addressed the limited points specifically raised by Forrestal but failed to satisfy the US Secretary of Defense. The PPS downplayed the likelihood of armed Soviet action, pointing to Moscow’s preference for political subversion and military intimidation to pursue its foreign policy objectives. American military strength should therefore be maintained, but only as a secondary factor to bolster the American diplomatic position vis-a`-vis the Kremlin. Forrestal was crestfallen that PPS/33 did not explicitly support expanding defence appropriations in the face of the ‘worsening’ world situation.14 A frustrated Forrestal felt that the report was ‘tantalizingly ambivalent’ towards military requirements.15 Yet because PPS/33 did not resolve the budgetary issue, the Pentagon continued to press for policy clarification. This in turn kept the issue of Soviet bloc policy in the foreground, despite immediate attention being diverted to the Soviet blockade of Berlin that summer. Two months later Kennan reluctantly produced another report designated PPS/38, which did now deal with broader policy questions.16 This paper promoted two general goals in relation to Moscow: US policy should aim to reduce Moscow’s power and influence to unthreatening levels, and bring about a basic change in the Russian theory and practice of international relations.17 These objectives were reminiscent of Kennan’s recommendation in his Foreign Affairs article published a year earlier: ‘to promote tendencies which must eventually find their outlet in either the break-up or the gradual mellowing of Soviet power’.18 Kennan later downplayed the significance of that article, describing how he had ‘so light-heartedly brought [it] to expression, hacking away at my typewriter there in the northwest corner of the War College building in December 1946’.19 But PPS/38 and subsequent policy papers took up a similar theme. In peacetime Washington should ‘encourage and promote by means short of war the gradual retraction of undue Russian power and influence’ from Eastern Europe. Fostering ‘institutions of federalism’ within the Soviet Union ‘would permit a revival of the national life of the Baltic peoples’. Washington should

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concurrently seek ways to ‘explode the myth’ of Soviet propaganda through US informational activities and ‘create situations which will compel the Soviet Government to recognize the practical undesirability of acting on the basis of its present concepts’. Kennan argued that these aims could be pursued without ‘the fundamental emphasis of our policy’ resting on the ‘preparation for an armed conflict’ or ‘to bring about the overthrow of the Soviet Government’. But America did have the moral right, according to Kennan, to promote the disintegration of the illegitimate projection of Soviet power in Europe. He did not divulge the strategy to achieve this aim, beyond a general notion of placing strain on the Soviet–satellite relationship and gradually manoeuvring Russian political and military influence out of Eastern Europe by fostering nationalism there.20 Circulated under the NSC 20 series, PPS/33 and PPS/38 generated considerable discussion within the administration.21 Yet no one linked peacetime political objectives to the newly created OPC to guide its planning for covert operations behind the iron curtain. The revised draft of PPS/33 and PPS/38 produced by the NSC staff on 28 September emphasised Soviet military capabilities and objectives precisely because military representatives on the NSC staff were most concerned about the perceived military threat to Western Europe.22 Therefore, the new draft titled NSC 20/1 and subsequent policy discussions failed to address the issue of a peacetime strategy, which was subsumed by Forrestal’s budgetary concerns. Nonetheless the production of NSC 20/1 did provide an opportunity to define America’s strategy towards the Soviet bloc. The new paper broadened the scope of the debate by positing American aims towards the Eastern bloc for the first time in the postwar period. An Advanced Study Group (ASG) ran the rule over the policy paper and in October 1948 gave a damning appraisal. The ASG was ‘opposed strongly’ to the NSC 20 series, declaring it ‘dangerous in the extreme’. The study group warned that ‘careless implementation’ of such a hard-line policy ‘might well create situations which the USSR would consider grounds for war’. Furthermore, the study group claimed that ‘the key policies are phrased in language which is subject to misinterpretation and which

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does not provide adequate guidance’. This was particularly true of the central objective to reduce Soviet power and influence. The ASG concluded emphatically that the administration must not accept this policy because it ‘is morally and legally wrong’, advising that the present paper should be destroyed and a ‘more careful’ policy statement developed.23 Despite this setback, a series of interdepartmental consultations were organised to discuss the NSC 20 series. This gave Kennan’s Planning Staff the chance to justify their attempt to broaden policy to encompass the Soviet bloc. At a Joint Orientation Conference meeting in Forrestal’s office on 8 November, Kennan explained that, beyond Western European policy, ‘in a tentative and preliminary way, we have tried to create conditions unfavorable to the maintenance of Soviet power in Eastern Europe’. Paraphrasing the aspirations expressed in NSC 20/1, Kennan claimed that the US was attempting ‘to put the maximum strain’ on the Soviet structure of power and Soviet–satellite relationships and ‘to encourage in every way the spirit of independence and freedom among the eastern European peoples’. According to Kennan it was hoped that ‘we would be able to maneuver the Russians gradually back out of eastern Europe behind the new borders of the Soviet Union’ without needing to resort ‘to the weapon of war’. Kennan stressed at this meeting that America’s developing Soviet bloc strategy was not ‘a purely negative policy, which precluded any forward action and therefore failed to envisage any real solution of Europe’s problems’ – as had ‘often been alleged’. Washington needed to exercise ‘discretion’ and diplomatic sensitivity. For this reason, said Kennan, US government officials ‘had to go easy on this phase of U.S. policy in our official and semi-official statements’. The US ‘cannot be too explicit in public statements about the breakup of Soviet power in eastern Europe without putting ourselves in the position of calling in effect for the overthrow of these governments’. This would be counterproductive because it ‘would play directly into the hands of the communist propaganda machine all over the world’.24 Public endorsement of the overthrow of the Kremlin and Soviet bloc regimes would certainly have been foolhardy and undermined Washington’s international credibility. But Kennan’s

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reasoning about public diplomacy was misleading because the Truman administration did not ever privately determine that its policy was to overthrow communist regimes. Washington did not fully commit to the ‘rollback’ of Soviet power, but neither did it definitively reject the goal of ‘liberation’. Instead the US government settled for a middle course that pursued ambiguous aspirational objectives in the Cold War. This fence-sitting deferred the need to take uncomfortable foreign policy decisions, leaving policy objectives vague and unclear. By settling on a middle course that did not fully endorse or abandon rollback, US policymakers, of whom Kennan was most culpable, allowed policy to waver between ‘revolution’ and ‘evolution’. Kennan fudged the need for a decisive approach by recommending that Washington should engage in indirect methods to pursue its objectives: It has been our conviction that if economic recovery could be brought about and confidence restored in western Europe [. . . this] would be bound in the end to have a disintegrating and eroding effect on the communist world. In this case, we think there is a good chance that the gradual breakdown of communist power in eastern Europe would occur.25 Kennan’s argument jarred with the recent adoption of NSC 10/2, which authorised the OPC to undertake a vast range of direct activities against the Soviet bloc. The OPC had still not been provided with strategic guidelines at the policy level to explain how to utilise the political warfare capability that it was now developing. Therefore the means of fulfilling American aspirations remained moot when the NSC staff released Washington’s first promulgation of a grand strategy in the Cold War.

Adoption of NSC 20/4 Approved on 23 November 1948 by Truman, NSC 20/4 was a significant statement of American intentions towards the Soviet bloc in the early Cold War. But its immediate impact on operations was

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relatively minor because it failed to bridge the strategic divide between general policy and specific measures.26 It is most noteworthy for being the first major ‘blueprint’ of the Cold War produced by the US government. Although Washington belatedly sought to define its objectives towards the Soviet bloc, NSC 20/4 contained major weaknesses carried over from previous drafts. As a result, it failed to provide a coherent strategy towards the East that linked American capabilities to realistic objectives. Two principal goals were delineated in NSC 20/4 that had been carried over from PPS/38. The US would aim to ‘reduce the power and influence of the USSR to limits which no longer constitute a threat to the peace, national independence and stability of the world family of nations’. It would also attempt to ‘bring about a basic change in the conduct of international relations by the government in power in Russia, to conform with the purposes and principles set forth in the UN charter’. These policy goals were not integrated into a programme of operations to be undertaken by the OPC. Instead of this NSC 20/4 contained vague aspirational declarations urging the US to ‘encourage and promote the gradual retraction of undue Russian power and influence [. . .] and the emergence of the satellite countries as entities independent of the USSR’. The means to this end was not clarified in the report. Instead NSC 20/4 contained a general statement of American measures under which specific operations by the OPC and other government agencies could later develop. Measures included the development of ‘military readiness’ to act as a ‘deterrent to Soviet aggression’, the improvement of US ‘internal security’ to guard against ‘the dangers of sabotage, subversion, and espionage’, and the strengthening of economic policies and American relations with non-Soviet nations. Most intriguingly, Washington would place ‘the maximum strain on the Soviet structure of power and particularly on the relationships between Moscow and the satellite countries’. This hinted at more aggressive operations without explaining what they would entail. Overall, the list of envisaged measures was totally inadequate to achieve the stated goal to undermine Soviet hegemony in the East. Not only were the methods too broad to be of practical operational

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use, but they did not seem to relate directly to the fundamental offensive objective in NSC 20/4 to bring about a retraction of Soviet power. On the contrary, they appeared to revisit the more defensive methods applied to Western Europe to contain communist expansion beyond the Soviet bloc. NSC 20/4’s usefulness to the OPC was therefore extremely limited. By November 1948, Wisner’s group was making preparations to conduct covert operations behind the iron curtain and required strategic policy guidance to ensure that its activities were feasible and consistent with US foreign policy aims. The failure to define a coherent strategy was rooted in a fundamental dilemma for American policymakers in the Cold War, which emanated from a caveat in NSC 20/4 that the US ‘should endeavor to achieve our general objectives by methods short of war’. An insurmountable challenge was exposed but not resolved by NSC 20/4. This was that the US aspired to foster Eastern Europe’s independence but it would only do so through peaceful means. In other words, the US in its first Cold War policy statement explicitly ruled out going to war to liberate Eastern Europe – and it never wavered from this position. Yet this limitation on US policy options cast serious doubt over the feasibility of the fundamental US goal to retract Soviet power. In the late 1940s Soviet-communist control over Eastern Europe clearly made this an unrealistic prospect through methods short of war. The core strategic contradiction at the heart of American Soviet bloc policy was enshrined: that the US would pursue the peaceful retraction of Soviet-communist power in Eastern Europe.27 The broad set of Cold War objectives issued in NSC 20/4 reflected the ideological consensus within the Truman administration by late 1948. Following the communist takeover in Prague and the Soviet blockade of Berlin, the vast majority of officials agreed with the hypothesis that US national security (broadly conceived) was threatened by the inherently expansionist tendencies of Sovietcommunist political ideology. According to this mindset, Russian power must ultimately be pushed back from Eastern Europe and the Kremlin’s international practices must be modified to ‘acceptable’ standards. NSC 20/4 provided American policymakers with an ideological boost. Despite its geopolitical impotence in the Soviet

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bloc the directive promised that US policy could reduce Soviet power over the long term. In response to external factors, two initiatives were developed during 1948 and 1949 that provided opportunities to define a coherent strategic approach to the Soviet bloc. Kennan’s PPS were at the centre of this as they began to grapple with methodologies for challenging and retracting Soviet-communist power in the East by methods short of war. The formulation of a new Yugoslav policy and a plan to reunify Germany were dynamic attempts to deliver strategic solutions to the entrenchment of Soviet power behind the iron curtain.

Germany, Program A and ramifications for the Cold War The initiative known as ‘Program A’ explored ways in which the US could loosen Soviet military and political control over Eastern Europe through a diplomatic settlement on the status of Germany. Although it never received significant support outside the PPS, the concept behind Program A was linked to other initiatives that were adopted by the Truman administration, including the use of political warfare in an effort to achieve its Soviet bloc objectives. Kennan realised early on that the ‘German question must be center of any overall European peace settlement and of any future ordering of the world’s affairs based even nominally upon wide international agreement’.28 Program A revisited the ‘German question’, calling for quadripartite agreement by the occupying powers on the unification and neutralisation of Germany. Safeguards were included in the proposal to provide against future German aggression. More important in the context of deepening Russo–American divisions was the prospect that a mutually beneficial settlement on Germany would allow the political situation in Europe to retain some fluidity. From mid-1948 Kennan increasingly realised that the Cold War polarity between East and West would become semi-permanent should Washington and its allies continue on their current course:

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We can no longer retain the present line of division in Europe and yet hope to keep things flexible for an eventual retraction of Soviet power and the gradual emergence from Soviet control, and entrance into a free European community, of the present satellite countries.29 Kennan saw that the partition of Germany and creation of a separate West German state tied into Western European recovery would inevitably be linked to a Western military alliance. This in turn would harden the Cold War schism and exacerbate mutual mistrust between East and West because, according to Kennan and the PPS, ‘both we and the Russians will have to take measures which will tend to fix and perpetuate, rather than to overcome, that division’. Under these conditions ‘it would be hard – harder than it is now – to find “the road back” to a united and free Europe’.30 Kennan had actually supported partitioning Germany in 1945.31 Until 1948 he viewed partition within the containment framework as a means of ‘walling [Germany] off against eastern penetration’.32 As Garson notes, Kennan repeatedly expressed his ‘antipathy to a rapprochement’ over Germany because of his distrust of Moscow’s intentions.33 He had also played a prominent part in forging the ERP and accepted that it would probably divide Europe – because Moscow would consolidate a defensive position in Eastern Europe in response to it. But Kennan’s views had shifted by mid-1948. He now hoped that a US diplomatic initiative could begin to counteract the projection of Soviet political and military power in Eastern Europe, particularly as the incipient Western European economic recovery was improving the American strategic position in Europe vis-a`-vis the Soviets. This therefore marked a sea change in Kennan’s conception of US foreign policy away from the fundamentally defensive containment strategy embodied by the ERP.34 Marshall Aid was designed to rehabilitate Western Europe to prevent further Soviet penetration of that region. Kennan now advocated a more forward-thinking and offensive strategy, albeit principally through diplomatic means, to retract Soviet power from areas under Moscow’s

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control. This process could be initiated by securing the withdrawal of Soviet garrisons from East Germany. Kennan’s change of heart with Program A must be considered in light of the Soviet blockade of Berlin. The blockade demonstrated Moscow’s vehement opposition to the London Program encompassing plans to establish an independent West German state integrated into the rest of Western Europe.35 Kennan realised that ‘the division of Germany, and with it the division of Europe itself, would tend to congeal and to become more difficult of removal with the passage of time’, while there would still also be ‘no real and permanent solution to the Berlin problem’.36 Rather than proceed with the development of polarised politicoeconomic and military blocs in Europe, Kennan submitted an alternative plan to the Truman administration on 12 August 1948. In PPS/37 he proposed to negotiate the withdrawal of occupation forces from Germany and the gradual establishment of a united, democratic German government with genuine independent powers. Kennan perceived several advantages to this course beyond Germany itself. A quadripartite settlement on Germany could be linked to similar agreements for Austria and Trieste. It would set a precedent for successfully negotiating disagreements with the Kremlin and thereby promote flexibility rather than rigidity in continental Europe. This was crucial if the US hoped to gradually draw away the communist regimes in Eastern Europe from Soviet domination towards the neutral states of Central Europe. The ‘certain withdrawal of Soviet forces toward the east’, Kennan argued, would loosen the Kremlin’s levers of control across the region. Over time this might facilitate the emergence of continental Europe as a ‘third force’ and a counterweight to US – Soviet bipolarity.37 In PPS/37 Kennan stressed his view that the opportunity to act must be taken while the ‘lines of cleavage’ in Europe had not yet hardened. If Moscow rejected Program A then ‘we should proceed vigorously with the London program’ to partition Germany while leaving the offer open as the basis for possible future negotiations.38 While Kennan readily accepted that ‘there is no serious possibility’ that the Kremlin would instantly and unconditionally accept

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Program A, he argued that ‘the significance of this program lies primarily in its potential psychological effect rather than in the possibility of its immediate acceptance’. By rejecting Program A, the Russians and not the Americans would bear primary responsibility for dividing Germany and the continent, in much the same way that Moscow had lost face when it snubbed the ERP. But Kennan also recognised that this should not detract from the possibility of future negotiations. Kennan also linked German unification to his strategic thinking towards the Soviet bloc. As he developed Program A he believed that it offered a way, in combination with other actions, of loosening and subverting Russian control over the Soviet bloc without recourse to war. The negotiated withdrawal of Soviet troops from Central Europe would complement American political warfare operations by softening Russian military control over the entire region. This would gradually enhance Washington’s ability to undermine the Soviet grip on the Eastern European states through political subversion. Unifying and neutralising Germany might also encourage the Soviets to tolerate nationalist movements in Eastern Europe, drawn to a neutral middle way between West and East. Through Program A, Kennan also believed the US could exploit Moscow’s weak negotiating position in light of the unpopular Berlin blockade. While the Red Army was encamped in Central and Eastern Europe, US political warfare operations to garner nationalist independence movements among the local populations faced the immediate threat of armed Soviet suppression. The partition of Germany would harden Cold War divisions and accelerate the superpowers towards hostile military alliances. Such an outcome would destroy any feasibility of retracting Soviet power from Eastern Europe by peaceful means, thus rendering political warfare operations redundant. Although it was extremely unlikely that Moscow would have accepted Program A in its original form, Kennan insisted that it was a ‘genuine and sincere bid for agreement’ that could ‘constitute a starting point for what will probably be long and difficult negotiations’.39 But Moscow’s position was never tested because

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the Truman administration did not pursue Program A, instead pressing ahead with German partition and bolstering Western Europe. The rejection of Program A marked the start of Kennan’s decline in influence within the US government.40 Program A was discarded when it ran into high-level opposition. General Clay and the US Office of Military Government in Germany, along with the US Department of Defense, supported partition rather than a quadripartite deal involving the Russians. Clay viewed the vulnerable American position in Berlin in light of the blockade as indicative of Western Europe’s weak strategic position generally. The creation of an independent West Germany integrated into an economically powerful and rearmed Western European bloc would be a powerful defensive deterrent to future Soviet aggression. Political and military alliances would help to preserve Western unity, improve and consolidate internal conditions within West Germany and dispel the suspicions of America’s Western European allies that it wanted to abandon them.41 This would allow Washington to exert greater control over its allies and discourage any Western European drift towards neutrality or communism.42 Many of Kennan’s senior colleagues within the State Department, including John McCloy, John Hickerson, Charles Bohlen and Robert Murphy, also opposed Program A.43 They felt it was too unpredictable in terms of future European developments and too divisive to the alliance system that the State Department was now working hard to forge. Washington’s allies (France in particular) remained staunchly opposed to German reunification so soon after the conclusion of the recent war. Paris was only reluctantly coming round to the more limited idea of tying West Germany’s independence into the broader programme of recovery for Western Europe. When Kennan submitted his revised proposal to Marshall in November 1948, ahead of the London CFM meeting that winter, the alternative London Accords for the establishment of a West German government had already been accepted by the Truman administration and by Washington’s allies in Paris and London. The administration did not publicly admit that it now opposed brokering a deal to unify and neutralise Germany, but this was mainly to save

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face. Behind the scenes, the course was firmly set to partition Germany and create an independent, democratic West-leaning state linked to Western Europe and the US through economic, political and military alliances. Kennan’s influence was minimal, despite his appointment to chair the NSC ‘Steering Committee’ on German policy in the winter of 1948.44 When Acheson replaced Marshall as Secretary of State at the turn of 1949, Kennan came up against one powerful opponent too many. Despite ubiquitous opposition, the PPS made one final attempt to resurrect Program A before the Paris CFM meeting in the spring of 1949. The plan was rejected out of hand by Secretary of Defense Louis Johnson and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Omar Bradley, who felt that it would surrender Washington’s advantageous position and hand the initiative back to the Soviets. On the eve of the CFM meeting a simplified version of Program A was leaked to New York Times columnist James Reston. The source of the leak was probably the Pentagon, and its publication caused panic among the French and British delegates in Paris that Washington was abandoning the London Program and nascent security pact. Truman immediately ostracised Program A in order to minimise the potential damage it could cause to tripartite plans for a West German state. Thus, Kennan’s vision of stimulating a ‘third force’ of neutralised states in Central and Eastern Europe that were not militarily aligned to East or West was put to rest.45 The demise of Program A marked a more fundamental rejection by the Truman administration of a resolution to the Cold War through mediation with Moscow. An alternative course was chosen: to organise an American-led coalition of Western European nations, including West Germany, and to develop positions of unanswerable strength within the Western bloc. Although this was primarily a defensive strategy, the development of ‘positions of strength’ favoured by Truman, Acheson and Kennan’s successor as head of the PPS, Paul Nitze, would inevitably deepen Cold War divisions.46 It stimulated further entrenchment of Moscow’s control over Eastern Europe, making the retraction of Soviet power without recourse to war strategically unfeasible. Kennan correctly

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identified that the only viable way to bridge the deepening gulf between Moscow and Washington was to return to the central issue of German unification. Despite choosing the alternative course of building up a powerful Western bloc, Washington did not overhaul its aspiration to peaceably liberate the Soviet bloc. This goal was totally unfeasible in light of the militarisation of the Cold War in 1949, but it was retained in American policy papers regardless. This left a window open for political warfare activists to implement offensive operations behind the iron curtain even though there appeared to be no feasible strategy underpinning them. From the outset, therefore, there were serious tensions between the application of political warfare and Truman’s broader foreign policy goals.

US policy and the Moscow – Belgrade dispute The dramatic breakdown of relations between Stalin and the communist ruler of Yugoslavia, Josip Broz Tito, in early 1948 was seen by American policymakers as an opportunity to create divisions within the Soviet bloc. The Tito– Stalin dispute occurred just as NSC 10/2 was under consideration, providing Washington with a chance to link events on the ground with America’s newly established political warfare organisation. Tito’s break with the Soviet bloc was confirmed when Yugoslavia was expelled from the Cominform in June 1948. The revelation of this event exposed three embarrassing facts for Washington. First, the US was caught completely by surprise by Tito’s quarrel with Stalin, pointing to a serious intelligence deficiency behind the iron curtain.47 Second, the split occurred in spite of American policy, not as a result of it. Washington’s perception of a monolithic communist bloc had fuelled an American sense of aloof hostility that had discouraged the Eastern European regimes from attempting to deviate from Moscow’s authority. The Tito rift compelled American officials to challenge this outlook.48 Third, it highlighted the lack of a workable strategy to respond to this incident and exploit its ramifications for the wider region.

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The Truman administration immediately regarded the rift as a significant development that could potentially advance American interests in the Soviet bloc, sparking a flurry of cables from American embassies in Europe to the State Department.49 But opinions diverged over how to exploit the dispute in support of broader American objectives. The CIA was pessimistic in its analysis of any wider impact across the Soviet bloc. Hillenkoetter advised Truman that ‘Tito’s recent example in defying the Cominform is not likely to be emulated in the immediate future by the other satellites’. Russian military power and Yugoslavia’s unique exercise of relative independence meant that ‘the Communist Parties in the other Satellites are too vulnerable to Soviet force to risk a break with the Kremlin at this time’. According to this view any attempt to stimulate further rifts between Moscow and the Eastern European regimes would therefore be futile.50 Kennan disagreed with this downbeat interpretation of the ramifications of the split. Until this point, precious few openings had presented themselves, so Kennan believed that the US must do everything in its power to promote further splintering of the communist bloc. Kennan immediately produced a report, PPS/35, in which he argued that the new development with Tito ‘creates an entirely new problem of foreign policy for this Government’. The ‘problem’ could be resolved by fostering other deviationist ‘Titoist’ regimes in Eastern Europe. Although the authoritarian Yugoslav ruler remained unpalatable to American tastes, the prize of breaking up the Soviet bloc through internal stresses was enticing. Here was the strategic opening, Kennan hoped, through which the US could contribute to the gradual retraction of Russian power in Eastern Europe. This attractive proposition placed the promotion of ‘national communists’ based on the Yugoslav model at the heart of US Soviet bloc policy – as an interim step towards the emergence of democratic, non-communist regimes.51 Despite the Agency’s misgivings, Lovett and Marshall both endorsed PPS/35 and the promotion of ‘Titoism’. Its recommendations were instantly dispatched in a circular telegram to all US diplomatic embassies and consular offices abroad so that ‘representatives of

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this Government will exhibit a uniform reaction to the recent developments in Yugoslavia’.52 The paper was circulated to the council on 6 July as NSC 18, although the cumbersome NSC then took eight weeks to approve its conclusions.53 A PPS report drafted in August reiterated that Tito’s example should be exploited in order to disrupt Soviet control over the satellite regimes. The PPS believed that the rift ‘has clearly demonstrated that it is possible for stresses in the Soviet– satellite relations to lead to a real weakening and disruption of the Russian domination’. This would, it was hoped, advance the possibility that the communist regimes in Eastern Europe would eventually secure full independence from Moscow.54 The change in outlook in Washington in the aftermath of the Tito-Stalin split resulted in a curious situation in which official US policy now endorsed the establishment of communist governments in Eastern Europe, albeit regimes of a nationalist rather than proSoviet composition. But beyond general aims the American strategy to parlay advantages from Tito’s quarrel was unclear. There was confusion in the US Embassy in Belgrade, for instance, over whether or not American officials should try to initiate discussions with the Yugoslav leader.55 The preliminary implementation of NSC 18 was therefore problematic. Confusion over the US position was not clarified at the policy level for almost nine months. Nor did the OPC receive guidance during this hiatus in relation to NSC 18’s instruction to disrupt the Soviet-satellite relationship. The need for clarification gained urgency as the Yugoslav regime became increasingly threatened by retaliatory Cominform measures, with Stalin determined to punish Tito for his defiance of the Soviet leader’s authority. Yet as the anti-Tito propaganda campaign and economic reprisals directed by Moscow intensified during the autumn and winter of 1948, American policy was characterised by strategic indecision. US diplomatic representatives overseas desperately lobbied Washington, calling for more to be done in line with NSC 18. The American Charge´ in Yugoslavia Robert Borden Reams bombarded Washington with telegrams urging the State Department to kick-start American policy into life. On 31 August he insisted to Marshall that: ‘Our strategy should seek maximum

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exploitation increasing opportunities to widen [the] gulf between Yugoslavia and [the] USSR and extend Tito’s influence among [the] Soviet satellites.’ This new division, Reams reminded Marshall, ‘represents today the outstanding political possibility in [the] Soviet sphere.’56 Two weeks later he exhorted the need for a ‘more active US policy toward Yugoslavia’. Tito’s regime had successfully defied the Kremlin for two and a half months, Reams argued, so ‘it would appear [that the] US should now discard [its] watchful waiting which has been [the] policy basis toward Yugoslavia and take some affirmative action’. He was backed up by the US Ambassador to Yugoslavia Cavendish Cannon – who declared his desire ‘to break up the Soviet bloc’ by playing ‘upon the fact that there was disunity in the Communist camp’ – as well as by the embassy’s political reporting officer William K. Leonhart.57 These views were consistent with the conclusions of NSC 18, but no one had explained exactly how to extrapolate advantages further afield from the Tito incident. In any case, the calls for action had no immediate impact in Washington even though Reams continued to press for a more assertive US approach. For instance, in midSeptember he asserted that ‘[p]ossibilities do exist in informational and economic fields’ to spread the message of Yugoslavia’s defiance of the Kremlin across the Soviet bloc.58 Yet according to John C. Campbell, the State Department officer in charge of Balkan affairs (and future member of the PPS), ‘it was terribly difficult to get anybody in Washington to move on this’. Instead of dynamism inside the State Department, there was ‘just inertia’. The reason for this paralysis was that some members of the department, including Charles Bohlen, agreed with the CIA’s sceptical analysis about the wider ramifications of the Tito – Stalin split. Bohlen cautioned that ‘thieves fall out. Okay, let’s just keep an eye on it. It doesn’t concern us, and it’s not our business to get involved in it in any way or to predict how it’s going to go.’59 The State Department was eventually roused from its slumber, according to Campbell, by ‘a famous telegram which the Embassy sent back saying, in effect, “How long is the Department going to sit around? Here we have the greatest heresy since Henry VIII, and

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Washington doesn’t seem to know it yet and to take account of it.”’60 It was not until February 1949 that State Department officials even met to discuss a strategy for gaining ‘maximum advantage out of Tito’s deviation from Kremlin hegemony’. Even though Tito’s nonconformity was still considered a valuable ‘erosive and disintegrating force’, the only options under consideration were economic measures, including loosening export-licensing controls to Yugoslavia.61 A revised policy paper, NSC 18/2, was subsequently adopted by the council on 17 February that propounded the merits of Titoism as ‘perhaps our most precious asset in the struggle to contain and weaken Russian expansion’. But still NSC 18/2 did not contain a specific explanation of how the US actually planned to harness this force.62 The State Department review of the economic aspects of NSC 18 coincided with a renewed attack from the CIA on the hypothesis that Titoist deviationist regimes were feasible elsewhere in the Soviet bloc. The Agency believed that ‘the Kremlin concurrently with its increased pressure on Tito, is taking measures to prevent a spread of “national” Communism into the remainder of the Satellite empire’. Therefore, American encouragement of further Titoists among the Eastern European regimes could undermine American objectives because ‘the Kremlin’s preoccupation with eliminating further sources of rebellion has resulted in an acceleration of plans to neutralize all satellite elements potentially hostile to the Soviet Union’.63 According to this analysis, Washington’s courtship of Tito was actually inimical to its broader regional goals because it would galvanise Moscow’s determination to liquidate nationalists and other opponents of Soviet power behind the iron curtain. Criticism of the feasibility of the Titoist concept did not deter the PPS. In early March 1949, PPS officials Ware Adams and John Paton Davies challenged the general emphasis of American policy on anticommunism, a tendency that they felt was both clumsy and detrimental to US interests. According to their assessment it was ‘in spite of’ American policies, ‘and remarkably so, that Tito has rebelled, and the Czechs are showing as much latent resistance as they are’. Washington’s depiction of a communist monolith had aided Stalin’s efforts to create and dominate a politico–ideological alliance

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in the East, while the Truman administration had failed to provide a viable alternative to Russian authority. ‘Our anti-communist policy’, Adams and Davies asserted, ‘is thus an increasingly great force in aid of the Kremlin’s desire to increase and solidify its monolith.’ They disagreed with the CIA’s negative analyses of the feasibility of further nationalist communists emerging as independent forces of the Kremlin. Their paper was a rallying cry borne out of their frustration, shared with US representatives abroad, at the lack of a clear policy and tangible progress in fostering other national communists. The PPS officials wondered whether ‘if we could put certain new refinements on our treatment of “Communism” it might provide an opportunity to “go to town” on the satellite and other communist areas outside Russia’.64 Two specific strategies were suggested by Adams and Davies. First, the US should encourage the withdrawal of Soviet occupation troops ‘to and through’ Germany and Austria, presumably along the lines of Program A. By doing this, they stated, ‘we would thus remove one of the major forces binding the satellites to the Soviet Union’. Weakening the Soviet military grip on Eastern Europe would allow Washington to ‘remove the other major political force binding the satellites to the Soviet Union’. Therefore American policies must be redefined to distinguish anti-communism from ‘Russian imperialism’, to engender ideological divisions between Moscow and the satellite regimes. Adams and Davies did not explicitly refer to Tito, but he was the obvious role model for other regimes to emulate. The ideological offensive against Russian domination could be pursued primarily through a vigorous American psychological warfare campaign. The message of Russian imperialism, they believed, ‘would be a far keener weapon, much better designated to cut a satellite’s bonds with the U.S.S.R. rather than its bonds with us’. This would be far more effective ‘than is the blunderbuss of primitive “anti-communism,” against a vaguely defined, out of date, self-contradictory, and possibly dying, set of political theories’. Kennan agreed with this sentiment, adding in pencil in the margin that the current ‘primitive anti-communism’ actually splattered ‘buck-shot into the subjugated as well as the subjugator’.65

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The spring 1949 policy debates Disagreement over the feasibility of Titoism, and a general lack of progress towards the achievement of Soviet bloc aims, indicated the urgent need for a policy review in 1949. PPS summoned the chiefs of the European desks and the US ambassadors and ministers to Eastern Europe for a series of meetings held in Washington in March and early April. These consultations would explore any positive steps that the US might take behind the iron curtain. The PPS was particularly keen to study measures to replicate Tito’s deviation from the Kremlin, as this embodied Washington’s only ‘foothold’ in the region.66 Therefore, the Washington consultations were not organised to examine whether or not the CIA’s strategic concerns over current policy had any foundation. Pressure from US representatives serving in Eastern Europe may have prodded the PPS to undertake a policy review, along with the Adams– Davies paper. It was also logical to extend the economic analysis in NSC 18/2 to incorporate a wider range of strategic themes. But the most likely stimulus for the review was the PPS’s desire to preempt an a NSC staff paper that was being prepared. The PPS could outflank this study by the military-dominated NSC staff and thereby retain overall control of policy formulation. The NSC staff study was prompted by the Defense Department’s request for a more detailed definition of measures against the Soviet bloc, geared towards military responsibilities. The study on ‘Measures Required to Achieve U.S. Objectives with respect to the USSR’ was a follow-up to the general objectives established in NSC 20/4. The first draft of the NSC staff report was completed on 11 January 1949 and was discussed by the NSC consultants six days later. Once again the PPS demurred from committing to specific measures. The PPS consultant to the NSC staff George Butler objected to the draft report, just as Kennan had to Forrestal’s earlier paper NSC 20, on the grounds that it ‘would lead to rigidity of U.S. position rather than to the flexibility of operations which is essential under present world conditions’.

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When the final document was released on 30 March, Kennan also stepped in, advising his seniors that approval of it would be ‘dangerous’. The Planning Staff was rattled by this outside attempt to develop policy and resented the Pentagon’s efforts to link the objectives in NSC 20/4 and NSC 18 to a specific set of measures. Kennan sent Marshall’s successor Dean Acheson and the new Under Secretary of State James Webb two messages in early April stating his firm opposition to the paper.67 He then explained his position at a departmental meeting on 15 April in order to ensure that the report would not be endorsed by his superiors. The military services, Kennan argued, seemed ‘unable to realize that in a field of foreign policy specific planning cannot be undertaken as they propose in the above paper’. For this reason, Kennan ‘had all along raised objection to this approach’. Now that NSC 20/4 had been approved, ‘no further detailed programming was necessary or desirable’. Kennan also objected to the Pentagon’s ‘assumption that a war with Russia is necessary’. In contrast, State Department thinking was based on ‘the assumption that some modus vivendi was possible’.68 This was a reference to the PPS’s core belief that American objectives, including the gradual fragmentation of Soviet predominance in Eastern Europe, could be pursued without going to war. Covert political warfare was regarded as a vital component of the non-military arsenal, although the PPS had so far not integrated this methodology within national policy statements. The NSC staff report did not explicitly link the OPC with a specific range of measures towards the Soviet bloc either. Peacetime ‘covert’ political warfare had been disembodied from the mainstream of strategic planning because of its high-security classification within the government and because the priority was to pursue positions of strength in the West. The NSC staff concentrated on military policy, and largely paraphrased the generalised recommendations in NSC 20/4 pertaining to peacetime political and economic measures against the Soviet bloc. They did advocate developing ‘internal dissension within the USSR and disagreements among the USSR and Soviet orbit nations’ as well as supporting ‘anti-Soviet activist organizations within the Soviet orbit’.69

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But these broad ambitions were not translated into a viable strategy to guide specific OPC operations. The assembly of the various regional specialists and representatives in Washington during March and April provided the forum for a comprehensive re-evaluation of American policy towards the Soviet bloc and the development of a more realistic strategy. The breadth of participation at these meetings also raised the prospect that policy would be better coordinated between the geographic desks and the PPS in Washington and the US embassies and missions in Soviet bloc countries. However, Wisner’s office was not represented – other than Robert Joyce, the PPS liaison to the OPC – so its input and role were overlooked. More problematic was the fact that many of the desk hands and US representatives abroad were excluded from access to Wisner’s organisation. The OPC’s exclusion underscored the Truman administration’s failure to fully integrate political warfare into strategic thinking at the policy level. Nevertheless, the Washington consultations were a genuine chance for the State Department to develop a viable strategy towards the Soviet bloc. Unfortunately, by the conclusion of the meetings little advance had been made on previous policy statements. At the first gathering on 1 March, Kennan explained to the assembled group that US policies over the past two years had focused on the ERP ‘to help save Western Europe from communism’. Now that this ‘has been achieved to a great extent’, said Kennan, Washington’s aim should be ‘to obtain the retraction of Soviet power from Eastern Europe’. If this could be achieved then ‘war should not be necessary’. This correlated with the goals Kennan had set out in NSC 20/4. But there were promising initial signs that the consultants would expand on the general aims expressed in that document. Kennan explained that the new study would comprise an individual and collective examination of the Eastern European countries to more effectively ‘determine what we can do to bring about the retraction of Soviet power from that area’. In particular, Kennan believed that the group of Eastern European specialists would be able ‘to determine what are the weak spots on which to hammer relentlessly’ and to confirm ‘whether we want in the first instance some form of Titoism’. Ambassador Walter Bedell Smith

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endorsed the interim Titoist policy encapsulated in PPS/35 and NSC 18. Echoing the views of Adams and Davies, Smith argued that Washington should ‘not fear communism if it is not controlled by Moscow and not committed to aggression’.70 Kennan’s call for a methodical examination of American options in the individual satellite countries came at the same time that he was attempting to revitalise Program A. In his view, the successful outcome of that initiative and the withdrawal eastwards of Soviet troops would foster the conditions by which he hoped interim national communist or even independence movements could flourish in Eastern Europe. The demise of Program A would, on the other hand, leave the gambit of national communism stranded. By spring 1949 it was plain that the Truman administration was committed to German partition and a Western European military alliance. This route would inevitably harden the Soviet resolve to dominate Eastern Europe, negating any prospects for national communist regimes to emerge in the Soviet bloc. The Eastern European ambassadors and division chiefs also ignored this reality at the Washington consultations. Following four meetings in March and early April, the national communist policy continued to be endorsed, with Kennan still its keenest proponent.71 Although some operational proposals were suggested at the Washington consultations, no policy statements were produced at their conclusion to elucidate US strategy towards the Soviet bloc.72 Just one month after the consultations, the strategic vacuum was exposed when US Under Secretary of State James Webb asked the PPS to design ‘a more active policy toward the satellites’. Despite this, the PPS continued to resist the Pentagon’s calls for a clearer statement of policy through the NSC staff paper. Ironically, Kennan solicited Webb’s support, despite his own call for policy clarification, and Webb in turn approached Souers in the NSC to ensure that the NSC staff paper did not gain leverage within the administration.73

The development of Soviet bloc policy, June–December 1949 Although the PPS successfully rebuffed the NSC staff’s attempt to define US Soviet bloc policy, the Planning Staff was obliged to act on

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Webb’s request to supply the administration with a policy statement. Kennan once again found himself cornered into having to meet the administration’s need for a clarification of its Eastern bloc strategy. Nevertheless, it took the PPS several months after the Washington consultations to submit a report, with strategic uncertainty persisting in the meantime. By mid-1949, the PPS had started developing fresh policy papers. Kennan’s role was now diminishing following the rejection of Program A. He grew to realise that isolated political warfare operations were futile unless diplomatic settlements were simultaneously reached with Moscow. Kennan’s efforts to foster a viable strategy to overcome East– West divisions waned as his despondency over the militarisation of the Cold War increased. In autumn 1949 he stepped down as director of the PPS and was succeeded by his deputy Paul Nitze at the beginning of 1950. Although Secretary Acheson nominally promoted Kennan to the position of US State Department Counselor, the transfer reflected his alienation from mainstream departmental policymaking and signalled his shift towards a career away from Washington.74 The personnel gap created by Kennan’s decline was immediately filled by colleagues in the Planning Staff, but the strategic gap in US policies was not so easily addressed. In mid-1949 Kennan assigned John Paton Davies ‘the task of thinking up some brave new approach to the question of what we do about Eastern Europe’. According to John C. Campbell, ‘the basic reason for [. . .] the initiative, came from the fact that the Marshall plan seemed to be a fruitful idea for Western Europe, but for various reasons we had been unable to extend it to Eastern Europe’. This was the crux of the problem. The Russians had ‘prevented the East European countries from taking part’ and this raised the dilemma that ‘what we were doing through the Marshall plan was really helping to freeze the division of Europe and did not help the situation at all in Eastern Europe’.75 The PPS met on 2 June to discuss the first draft of the resultant paper, PPS/59. It was primarily written by Joyce and Davies in light of the spring Washington consultations.76 By August a final draft had been drawn up that was then disbursed among the NSC members

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for their consideration.77 According to Joyce and Davies, the main purpose of PPS/59 was to tackle one of the major problems facing US strategists – to define a clear plan to link methods to the key US objective ‘to reduce and eventually to cause the elimination of dominant Soviet influence’ in Eastern Europe. Joyce and Davies described the complex factors that limited US influence in the Soviet bloc, hinting at the earlier misgivings that Davies and Adams had expressed about the effectiveness of current US policies.78 They also acknowledged in PPS/59 that the Yugoslav– Soviet rift was heavily influenced by the internal characteristics of the Tito regime. Joyce and Davies now agreed with previous Agency estimates that unique factors in Yugoslavia facilitated Tito’s defiance of Moscow – the Yugoslav Communist Party was largely Tito’s personal creation; the country had not been occupied by the Red Army at the end of World War II; and the regime, from its inception, had successfully resisted widespread penetration by Stalinist agents. Consequently, PPS/59 cast serious doubt over the credibility of the Titoist policy because it was recognised that ‘[such] [c]onditions do not now exist in the satellite states which would permit them promptly to follow the pattern of Yugoslavia’.79 Yet Joyce and Davies did not explicitly reject the notion that nurturing national communism was a feasible policy option. According to their PPS colleague John Campbell, PPS/59 was in fact ‘merely a codification’ of the existing Yugoslav policy and an attempt to apply it more generally to the rest of the Soviet bloc.80 Joyce and Davies argued in language reminiscent of NSC 7 that ‘the time is ripe for us to place greater emphasis on the offensive’. Primarily this ‘offensive’ should entail encouraging more ‘schismatic communist regimes’ to emerge in the Titoist mould, no matter how ‘weak’ the grounds for such a policy ‘may now appear’. Washington could contribute to the ‘heretical drifting away process’ without being ‘directly involved in engaging Soviet prestige’. This was crucial because infringing vital Soviet interests would almost certainly precipitate a military confrontation. The Truman administration was committed to avoiding a direct conflict with Moscow unless its own vital national security interests were threatened.

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Joyce and Davies were fishing for a Soviet bloc strategy, but no convincing policy options took the bait. This resulted in illogical recommendations being put forward in PPS/59. They admitted that promoting non-Stalinist communist regimes was ‘the only practical immediate expedient’ available to US strategists. The ultimate goal of fostering independent, democratic governments in Eastern Europe was totally unfeasible by that reckoning. So the PPS settled on the middle course: to foster Titoist national communism in the Soviet bloc even though it openly admitted that this approach was riddled with strategic flaws and could even jeopardise the fundamental longterm goal of nurturing non-communist regimes.81 CIA estimates had already raised this concern.82 The latest round of purges in the satellites made it plain that any outward display of nationalist forms of communism in the Soviet bloc would not be tolerated by Stalin. Despite all the cautionary caveats in PPS/59, Joyce and Davies did not abandon political warfare either. They claimed that the employment of ‘conventional political, economic and propaganda measures’ would have to be heavily supplemented by the ‘weapons in the armory of clandestine operations’ in order to attain full effectiveness. The Planning Staff recommended that covert operators should ‘unremittingly’ focus their attack on ‘the ideological front, specifically directed at the Stalinist dogma of satellite dependence upon and subservience to the U.S.S.R.’. Despite this emphasis on covert psychological and political warfare, Joyce and Davies betrayed the unsuitability of these methods in practice, stating that it was ‘probably in the economic realm that we can most concretely make our influence felt’ rather than through subversive methods. As with previous policy-level reports drafted in Washington, PPS/59 was of little practical use to the OPC in the field. The document issued a muddled message. The OPC’s operations must be strategically aimed towards supporting certain types of nationalist communists over Stalinist groups, rather than non-communists and anti-communists. The methods to wage this campaign were vaguely described in the broadest terms. Although the dissemination of propaganda promoting the virtues of nationalism in the satellites was well within the OPC’s capabilities, PPS/59 did not explain how this

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could be done without arousing nationalist sentiment of an anticommunist character. In reality there was no practical way of restricting the effects of American-sponsored psychological warfare operations from the other side of the iron curtain. But this lesson would only finally be learned by the Eisenhower administration in the aftermath of the Hungarian uprising in 1956. The stricture that national communists rather than anticommunists should be promoted reflected the negative prerogative that, in order to avoid provoking a conflict over Eastern Europe, Soviet vital interests must not be threatened by US actions. After all, the region was actually described in PPS/59 as being ‘of secondary importance on the European scene’.83 The national communist policy, therefore, went down two strategic cul-de-sacs. In the unlikely event that ‘heretical’ communists managed to organise a cogent political movement behind the iron curtain, Washington was not prepared to step in with military support to protect it from the inevitable Soviet backlash in the current paranoid climate created by Tito’s ‘defection’. Washington was also not prepared to intervene if a popular anti-communist rebellion rose up, because to do so would again engage Soviet ‘prestige’ and this would almost certainly trigger a direct military conflict. American policy, in other words, was at a dead end. The basic US objective was to promote regional independence, but any movement that threatened Soviet control over Eastern Europe would inevitably be crushed by the Red Army. The strategic limits of American policy were demonstrated to devastating effect in East Germany, Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia in the 1950s and 1960s. Meanwhile, the nationalist communist Polish leader Wladyslaw Gomulka was tolerated because his reign did not threaten to unseat Soviet dominance over Poland. Despite these serious flaws, the substance of PPS/59’s conclusions and recommendations survived the debating and redrafting process. John C. Campbell recollected that some ‘really rather extensive and sometimes bitter arguments’ broke out between the PPS and the State Department’s geographic desks over the promotion of nationalist communists in particular. Many Truman officials found it hard to stomach a policy ‘that seemed to accept that Communism was okay for Eastern Europe,

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basically’. But this was fundamentally an ‘ethical’ dispute, not one that questioned the strategic viability of fostering Titoism. Thus the policy survived in the absence of compelling alternatives.84 With the demise of Program A and the determination of senior figures, including Acheson and Nitze, to only negotiate with Moscow from ‘positions of strength’, there was a serious absence of feasible policy options towards the Soviet bloc. The State Department therefore clung to the pretence that the US could influence regional developments behind the iron curtain through measures short of war. This enabled the Truman administration to concentrate on other priorities, especially the consolidation of political, economic and military strength in Western Europe.

The London Conference of US Ministers to Eastern Europe Although the wider US administration generally concurred with PPS/59’s conclusions, the central concept to promote the Yugoslav model was only tenuously accepted. The new statement of Soviet bloc policy was examined at a three-day conference of the US Chiefs of Mission to Eastern Europe, held in London in late October. Truman had suggested in May that the Eastern European Chiefs of Mission should periodically gather to discuss and develop policies.85 This meeting was also an opportunity to follow up on the Washington consultations, now that the PPS had produced a policy statement. The ministers ‘unanimously’ agreed with the PPS’s maxim that ‘Tito’s defection has created a schism in the communist world that should be exploited’. The feeling was that Yugoslavia’s current status ‘represents a fundamental challenge to Moscow’s control of the world communist movement’. Furthermore, because Tito’s ‘defection’ raised the ‘basic issue of nationalism’, his example could challenge ‘the Kremlin’s control and discipline within the world communist apparatus’. But when this issue was related to the ‘question of whether the Titoist movement would spread to other satellites’, the ministers’ expectations were considerably less positive. There was ‘general agreement’ among the participants that ‘because of geographic and other factors, including the presence of the Red Army and the lack of any organized opposition, there

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was no prospect at this juncture of a successful attempt to emulate Tito’s action’ elsewhere. The effort to ‘keep Tito afloat’ was vital in terms of perpetuating the Moscow–Belgrade schism and to divert the Kremlin’s presumed expansionist energies away from Western Europe. But there was believed to be little potential for the PPS’s hopes of driving a wedge between Moscow and the other regimes in Eastern Europe. The ministers did not explicitly reject the central policy to foster further national communist movements outside Yugoslavia, a strategy that was now enshrined in the latest official policy statement NSC 58. Tellingly, however, the London conferees stressed the need to devise a strategy to facilitate NSC 58’s conclusions. For the ministers, ‘the execution of the tactical plans’ that would embody the substance of the generalised policy statement was ‘of the greatest importance’. This ‘tactical’ approach required the State Department to begin ‘carefully’ planning specific programmes of operations ‘with the maximum practicable coordination’ with the missions ‘in the field’ in Eastern Europe. The ‘most readily available weapons’ envisaged at the London conference included ‘economic pressures’ against the Soviet bloc countries, alongside the ‘proper use’ of Voice of America (VOA) and ‘possibly other informational media’. The representatives counselled that ‘tactical planning and implementation of such plans as are developed are a matter of great urgency and should be receiving the immediate attention of the appropriate elements of the U.S. Government’.86 These recommendations highlighted that the OPC’s role in the region was not being considered on a department-wide basis. By calling for the initiation of coordinated tactical planning between the State Department and the field missions, the London conferees demonstrated that the OPC at the very least was not being coordinated with the official American missions in Eastern Europe. The strategic implications exposed by the London conference were more significant than the lack of organisational coordination. The appeal for urgent tactical planning highlighted the continued absence of a strategic framework for US foreign policy in the Soviet bloc. Responsibility for policy development tended to be delegated by senior officials to the PPS. But the Planning Staff had continuously shied away from detailed and specific planning policy,

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stifling calls from outside the department to link broad objectives with more precise methods in order to retain its control over policy. This had also papered over the inadequacy of ‘methods short of war’ to achieve the stated US goal of lifting the iron curtain. When NSC 58 was disseminated among the council members for consideration, the State Department released three further statements focused exclusively on Yugoslavia. These papers emphasised the shortterm goal of assisting Tito’s survival against Soviet and Cominform subversive pressures, as ‘an erosive and disintegrating force within the Russian power sphere’, while retaining the concept that Titoism could be spread throughout the Soviet empire.87 In reality, extending American support to Tito’s regime was a more credible policy than pursuing region-wide nationalism by fostering communist ‘heretics’. But these specific Yugoslav reports diverted attention from more fundamental strategic concerns raised by NSC 58. This was demonstrated at a meeting of the US ambassadors to Western Europe in Paris just days before the London conference of Eastern European ministers. The well-worn theme of the importance of Yugoslavia’s independent course was emphatically endorsed, but the ambassadors did not review the policy of promoting Titoism across the region. Bohlen, who was now minister to the embassy in France, declared that despite the distasteful moral character of the Yugoslav regime, the ‘Tito heresy was the most important recent development, striking at the very roots of Kremlin domination, and may prove to be the deciding factor in the cold war’.88 US Representative to the Economic Cooperation Administration Averell Harriman concurred, exaggeratedly adding that ‘victory or defeat of Tito may be our victory or defeat in the cold war’. The ambassadors did not explicitly question whether the Yugoslav model should form the basis of the broader regional policy contained in NSC 58, but appeared to tacitly agree.89 The military also threw its support behind the principle of supporting Titoism. The JCS reported that they ‘fully concur’ with the conclusions of the Yugoslav paper PPS/60 that was disseminated among council members as NSC 18/3 in early November. The JCS anticipated that ‘advantages’ would develop, ‘especially if Tito’s

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example gives impetus to defections by other satellite states’. In short, the JCS hoped that the Tito phenomenon would have a broader impact on Eastern Europe, a similar sentiment to that expressed in NSC 58. Therefore, ‘from the military point of view’ the provision of economic and military aid to support Yugoslavia’s independence was deemed sound policy.90 The latest redraft of NSC 58 by the NSC staff was discussed at a PPS meeting one week before the final statement was approved by the council. Paul Nitze emphasised aspects of the paper, particularly concerning economic policy, that could confidently be pursued by Washington. But Nitze was puzzled about the overall strategy, expressing ‘some doubt about the emphasis on covert activities, preferring to place our emphasis on the ideological factor’.91 This confusion indicated the prevailing lack of a clear and unified vision within the PPS and the wider administration over how political warfare could attain NSC 58’s interim and longer-term objectives. Meanwhile, the increasingly peripheral Kennan continued to reject calls for the State Department to define basic US objectives linked to a detailed framework of methods.92 The design and implementation of Soviet bloc policy was in disarray. Although the State Department refused to give up on the national communist policy, despite its inherent strategic flaws, the CIA again succinctly rejected its basic premise while NSC 58 was being redrafted. A CIA memorandum drafted on 7 November dismissed the State Department’s suggestion that other regimes in Eastern Europe could follow the Yugoslav example. The CIA was realistic in its estimation that Moscow’s ‘firm control of the satellite regimes eliminate the possibility that any Satellite in the near future can be separated from the Soviet Union by measures short of war’. The logical conclusion to draw from this was that the national communist strategy must be abandoned. It is not clear whether this paper ever reached senior Truman officials, but it made no impact on the flawed policy conclusions written into NSC 58, which implicitly took the opposite view.93 The PPS was not oblivious to the cracks that were beginning to show in the developing policy statement. John Davies, who had vented his frustration over the lack of success of the national

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communist policy to Kennan in March 1949, penned another memorandum in October raising alarm over several inadequacies, as he saw them, of US operations targeting the Soviet bloc. In this paper, Davies distanced himself from the interim national communist policy advocated by Kennan, without attempting to define an alternative strategic framework in its place. Instead he explored broad aspects of a US campaign to weaken the Kremlin’s control over its own population, and by extension the peoples of Eastern Europe. According to Davies, Washington should concentrate on undermining Moscow by harnessing the most powerful resource available to it in the region: anti-communist nationalism. Davies was therefore moving away from Kennan’s ‘middle course’ of fostering interim nationalist communist regimes. In two respects, Davies argued emphatically, the US has ‘thus far been delinquent’ in exploiting the revolutionary potential of the Soviet bloc populations. In terms of its peacetime activities, Washington had failed to mobilise an effective propaganda offensive against the Soviet Union. A ‘Russian non-returnee organization in Europe’ should be established to act as a cover for psychological warfare operations against Moscow. The US could then orchestrate the largescale production and dissemination of anti-Soviet propaganda leaflets ‘almost daily over the eastern portion of the U.S.S.R. by means of meteorological balloon’. This propaganda barrage would serve several purposes, according to Davies. It would supplement VOA broadcasts in ‘bolder and blunter tones’, vulnerable as they were to Soviet jamming. It would engage and divert the Soviet security apparatus into the ‘highly uneconomic activity of collecting small pieces of paper throughout Russia west of the Urals’. It would also intensify the ‘prevalent atmosphere’ of ‘domestic suspicion and mutual denunciation’ within the Soviet Union.94 The suggestions made by Davies for peacetime measures were hardly radical in the context of the early Cold War, although the scale of the venture he envisaged was perhaps unrealistic. In fact, this constituted the minimum of what the PPS had been calling for over the last year in terms of expanding the psychological warfare campaign. This paper was significant not so much for what it

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proposed, but because Davies felt compelled to draw attention to the inadequacies of current US policies and operations. Fissures were growing over the national communist strategy, particularly because it was failing to deliver any tangible results in the Soviet bloc. The national communist strategy was also generating considerable confusion within the Truman administration over what operations the US should conduct in Eastern Europe. This uncertainty stemmed primarily from the central dilemma of whether to endorse a strategy of liberation, with all the ramifications that this invoked, or settle for a more limited and arguably less effective middle course. Davies did not advocate a revolutionary policy during peacetime, but he came fairly close, by recommending the highly conspicuous and provocative peacetime organisation of a US capability to stimulate civil war in Russia should hostilities break out: Washington ‘should overtly enlist numerous small cadres from anti-Soviet elements’ who could be ‘openly trained as airborne and parachute guerrilla units and foci of organized revolt’. This was, according to Davies, an initiative that had been ‘anticipated in the drafting of NSC 10/2’. Although these e´migre´ units would be strictly limited to wartime use, their highly visible employment and training would serve US peacetime objectives by acting as a deterrent to Soviet aggression. They would convey ‘the clear implication’, Davies explained, ‘that in the event of war they would be introduced into the interior of Russia for purposes of organizing civil war’. The Kremlin’s fear of indigenous uprisings was so intense that wielding the threat of revolution in peacetime could be ‘the strongest insurance we can buy against overt Soviet aggression’.95

The adoption of NSC 58/2 On 8 December 1949, the NSC finally adopted a policy statement on the Soviet bloc. Despite the lengthy wait for its production, NSC 58/2 did not successfully resolve the fissures and flaws within the Truman administration’s Soviet bloc policy. Instead the directive struck an ineffective compromise between rollback and nonintervention in Eastern Europe.

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Under the middle course set out in NSC 58/2, the long-term goal of developing ‘independent non-totalitarian and non-communist governments willing to accommodate themselves to, and participate in, the free world community’ was retained. But practical expediency influenced additional endorsement of the interim goal to foster national communists behind the iron curtain. This therefore marked a shift from the recommendations in NSC 20/4 that did not distinguish between Soviet and communist power. The new approach would ostensibly allow Washington to move beyond the ‘defensive accomplishments’ of ‘containment’ in Western Europe. The NSC accepted the view that the ‘time is now ripe for us to place greater emphasis on the offensive to consider whether we cannot do more to cause the elimination or at least a reduction of predominant Soviet influence in the satellite states of Eastern Europe’. In particular, Washington should concentrate on undermining the Soviet–satellite relationship now that Western European recovery and stability was secure. The central question remained unanswered over how to achieve the objectives set out in NSC 58/2 and what the ‘offensive’ would specifically entail. The document rejected recourse to a direct conflict ‘if for no other reason, because it is organically not feasible for this Government to initiate a policy of creating a war’. Moreover, the Truman administration admitted that the region was only ‘of secondary importance on the European scene’. Securing Eastern Europe’s self-determination was not a geopolitical priority, so American policymakers would only commit limited methods and resources to this goal. In any case, a direct conflict with the Soviet Union to secure the region’s independence was out of the question, especially with Moscow’s acquisition of the atomic bomb in 1949. The explicit rejection of war as a means of liberating Eastern Europe had a crucial bearing on US foreign policy towards the Soviet bloc for a number of reasons. It raised the fundamental question of whether or not current US objectives for the region were feasible in the foreseeable future without recourse to military conflict. If US objectives were unrealisable through non-military measures then a dramatic reassessment of these aims was required. Furthermore, the explicit rejection of military force intrinsically restrained the

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methods that Washington could pursue short of war. Peacetime operations would have to be limited in order to minimise any likelihood that they would spark a major crisis. The decision to avoid war was sound, because even if there was the appetite to fight a Third World War in order to liberate Eastern Europe, the devastation that would be incurred in a full-scale nuclear and conventional conflict between the US and USSR made this undertaking counter-intuitive. Rejecting the use of military force tacitly pushed American policy towards non-interference in the Soviet bloc. But this of course was ideologically repellant to American policymakers in the early Cold War. More than this, domestically it would be politically damaging to adopt a non-interventionist policy in Eastern Europe. At the dawn of the McCarthy era, the Truman administration could ill-afford another foreign policy scandal following the perceived loss of China to Mao’s communist forces. The Republicans were determined to capitalise on a growing sense of dissatisfaction with Truman’s handling of the Cold War, in particular because Thomas Dewey had pulled his punches on foreign policy issues during his failed presidential bid in 1948. The Truman administration was therefore in a bind over Eastern Europe. It was faced with what it considered to be two unacceptable alternatives – war or negotiations. Because neither of these options was favoured, the Truman administration persisted with an unrealistic compromise policy in NSC 58/2 to foster national communists in Eastern Europe as a temporary step towards the achievement of longer-term goals. The resulting policy was indecisive, ambiguous and contradictory. For instance, according to the report’s conclusions, political and psychological warfare should be employed both to ‘keep alive the anti-communist sentiment and hope’ of non-communists within the satellites, as well as bolstering nationalist communist elements. Furthermore, the authors of NSC 58/2 explored specific aims to encourage conditions akin to those in Yugoslavia. This included the elimination of ‘all forms of Soviet intimidation’, the isolation of ‘Stalinists from the nationalist elements’ of the communist parties, and criticism of the Stalinist dogma of ‘satellite subservience to the USSR’ by encouraging

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nationalism. Washington should do ‘what it can practically, particularly through covert operations and propaganda’. Yet serious doubts were raised over the prospects of successfully promoting national communism. It was openly admitted, for instance, that conditions ‘do not now exist in the satellite states which would permit them promptly to follow the pattern of Yugoslavia’. Confusingly, despite the lack of requisite conditions it was still suggested that ‘[if] we are willing that, as a first step, schismatic communist regimes supplant the present Stalinist governments, we stand a much better chance of success’. This policy was therefore based on the illogical premise that national communist regimes could prevail, even though the conditions required for their materialisation did not exist. NSC 58/2 was an imaginative document, but it was not grounded in empirical realism. There was no analysis of how national communist regimes, if they managed to emerge, would be able to avoid incurring the wrath of the Kremlin, given that the US had ruled out the threat of war as a military deterrent. Instead of encapsulating a pragmatic policy evaluation, NSC 58/2 fancifully envisioned the gradual emergence of two opposing communist blocs as a result of the American policy to foster ‘a heretical drifting-away process on the part of the satellite states’. The rise of ‘a Stalinist group and a non-conformist faction’ was described as the ‘more feasible course’ despite recognition elsewhere in NSC 58/2 that this was not a viable outcome at present. Then, based on a further conceptual leap of faith that was left unexplained in the report, these ‘schismatic’ communist governments would evolve over the longer term into democratic Western-oriented regimes.96

The transition of policy in 1950 Once Truman had approved NSC 58/2, the PPS continued to struggle to justify the promotion of national communism. A PPS draft paper prepared in December 1949 still endorsed Titoism while simultaneously accepting that an American campaign to foster further communist ‘heretics’ in the Soviet bloc might provoke a

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defensive crackdown by Moscow. This course would therefore be counterproductive for US interests, because ‘the conduct of an offensive on our part may for some time increase the sense of insecurity in the Kremlin and so contribute to solidifying Soviet influence and control in its empire rather than weakening it’. The infeasibility of the Titoist model was brushed aside with the unconvincing assertion of American (as opposed to Soviet) agency, that the ‘outcome will depend in great part on the skill and judgment with which we determine our moves’.97 The first progress report on NSC 58/2 also failed to question the viability of ‘the short-term objective of disrupting the Soviet– satellite relationship’ by ‘weakening the Soviet grip in these countries’. Although it was difficult to measure ‘tangible results of our measures’, it was thought that the ‘wave of purges’ of communists and non-communists in Eastern Europe indicated Soviet apprehension of ‘deviationism’. The problem for US policy based on fostering Titoism was that the Kremlin was afraid that other Eastern European regimes would try to emulate Yugoslavia to forge an independent course. The progress report did not illuminate how political deviants of any persuasion were supposed to survive the inevitable Soviet backlash. Instead emphasis was given to exploiting political instability within the Soviet bloc, because ‘[in] the atmosphere of suspicion and fear it may be open to us to widen some of the cracks which are appearing in the structure of Soviet control by psychological, economic and other means’.98 There was increasing dissent within the Truman administration over the national communist policy, even though NSC 58/2 had been adopted. At a series of PPS meetings in January 1950, Kennan resolutely defended the rationale behind that directive. Kennan reiterated the Kremlin’s determination to prohibit ‘heretics’, arguing that this would result in the ‘excommunication’ of communists from the Stalinist camp. He added optimistically that ‘your whole ideology falls apart if you permit to exist in the fold heretics who attack it’.99 But Kennan’s logic was contradictory. The prevailing view was that communist ‘heretics’ would be liquidated by Stalin rather than excommunicated. Kennan was swimming against the tide. Bohlen

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countered that the Kremlin was already cracking down on dissent in the satellites in order to impose Soviet control over the Eastern bloc. They ‘don’t care how tough they have to be to accomplish that purpose’, he declared. Taking Poland as an example, Bohlen warned Kennan that the Soviets ‘don’t intend to pamper the Poles or stand for any nonsense from them, and they want the Poles to know that’.100 On 1 January 1950 Davies raised his own doubts over the American approach to the Soviet bloc. He argued that US strategy was ‘a failure as it now stands’. The reason for this originated in the NSC 20 series, according to Davies, which was too ‘vague in outlining the means by which these objectives could be attained or in evaluating the capabilities of the U.S. to successfully pursue such aims’. These reports had failed in their most basic requirement to clearly define fundamental American aims. They did not clarify whether Washington aimed to ‘contain the Soviet Union or to foment opposition on the part of the peoples of the USSR and the satellites against the Soviet regimes, or to bring about other means, which would not involve challenging the Soviet regime’s internal power, or to change the basic concepts and actions held by the Soviet leaders or ruling groups’.101 Davies followed this note with a more detailed paper in early March that focused on exploiting nationalism rather than national communism. He returned to the themes of his October 1949 memorandum in which he had highlighted the inadequacies of US operations in Eastern Europe. Davies now argued that while ‘the Kremlin has since the early days of the Bolshevik regime sought to subvert our society, we have not until the establishment of the Voice of America attempted to breach the [iron] curtain and make known to the Soviet people the meaning of freedom and democracy’. Davies felt it was self-evident that the US should immediately undertake its own subversive operations through the OPC and other conduits to counter the Soviet threat: The direction which we should now take would seem to be obvious – the introduction into the U.S.S.R. by meteorological balloons of propaganda designed to (1) deepen the gulf between the Soviet people and the Kremlin, (2) foster passive resistance

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to the regime and (3) keep alive in the Soviet people appreciation for humane values and hope of their eventual fulfillment in what is now the Soviet Union.102 The psychological warfare programme, Davies counselled, must be carefully coordinated by the State Department with the implementing organisations. ‘If handled badly’, he warned, ‘this operation will do us harm.’ However, if it was ‘skillfully manipulated, particularly through non-American “fronts,” it may prove to be one of the most powerful weapons we can bring to bear in the cold war’. In his earlier paper Davies had also urged the United States to make wartime preparations for armed uprisings in the Soviet bloc. He went further in March 1950, arguing that ‘[the Soviet regime’s] existence could be imperiled not only by war with an external foe but also by successfully organized internal resistance’. Although he admitted that there is ‘no prospect of significant organized resistance inside the U.S.S.R. at this time’, he recommended that ‘one of our prime tasks [should be] to enable the development now outside of the U.S.S.R. of potential leadership for such resistance’. Such a programme against both the USSR and the satellites would be valuable ‘not only in terms of preparation for a possible war’, as he had previously suggested. It would also act ‘as a constant intimation of possible diversion in the Soviet rear tending to distract the Kremlin from focusing its full attention and energies on expansive operations’. Davies was now getting extremely close to the radical endorsement of a campaign to organise and sponsor revolutionary forces in the Soviet bloc in peacetime.103 The OPC was receptive to these calls for a more offensive programme behind the iron curtain, especially because they overlapped with intensive demands from the military to organise the wartime retardation and resistance potential of the Soviet bloc countries after the outbreak of the Korean War. In early February 1950 the State Department commenced several fresh studies of American regional policy, as well as case-by-case studies of the individual satellite states. These investigations were

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not dominated by PPS but were turned over to departmental officers ‘with particular responsibility for the affairs of individual countries in this area’, who were asked to make policy recommendations. Several themes, including the use of economic and psychological warfare operations, were singled out for scrutiny. Moreover, the OPC was asked by the State Department to contribute to the development of a specific programme ‘with respect to the unconventional operations mentioned in NSC 58/2’.104 The State Department subsequently completed several position papers on the Soviet bloc in April 1950 in preparation for the conference of the American, British and French foreign ministers scheduled for 11 – 13 May. Although the national communist policy was not explicitly rejected, attention shifted to a wider set of tactics, thereby diluting the prominence of Titoism in the State Department’s strategic thinking. The first report was prepared by the Office of Eastern European Affairs and was circulated around the State Department on 11 April. It was asserted that the ‘principal purpose’ of US policy towards the Soviet bloc states ‘is to weaken the Soviet grip upon them, with the ultimate aim of eliminating preponderant Soviet power there’. The current trend of events, according to the Office of Eastern European Affairs, ‘is moving rapidly towards Moscow’s goal of undiluted communist regimes under absolute Soviet control’. Washington must therefore do all it can to ensure ‘that the trend toward the domination and absorption of the nations of Eastern Europe by the USSR should be slowed and, if possible, reversed’. There was no new departure in these statements and no longawaited clarification of a specific strategy to bring about US aims. But the report did strike a more realistic tone than previous papers propounding national communism. Due to the ‘position of virtual impotence to which the West has been reduced in Eastern Europe’, it was acknowledged that ‘it is difficult to find positive means of attaining or even pursuing Western objectives’. Nevertheless, several measures were suggested. The promotion of Titoism was included, although it came a long way down the list of priority measures. Washington should ‘maintain a strong propaganda offensive against

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the communist regimes of Eastern Europe, especially through radio broadcasts, in order to maintain the morale of the people and to cause difficulties to Soviet efforts to establish full control’. The withdrawal of Soviet forces from Central and Eastern Europe should be encouraged through propaganda and diplomacy. US policies should be coordinated with British and French attitudes, while the United Nations forum should be used to maximum advantage. Finally it was suggested that the US should ‘make full use’ of ‘Tito’s quarrel with the Kremlin in encouraging all signs of Titoism in the Soviet satellites’, before adding the caveat that the ‘majority of the people in those countries oppose all varieties of communism’.105 A second State Department paper drawn up one week later placed emphasis on the ‘vulnerabilities’ that were inherent in the repressive ‘Soviet power system’. Although these weaknesses ‘by themselves will not seriously weaken the USSR’, the report stated that if they were ‘systematically exploited through external pressures [. . .] they could produce repercussions which would weaken the Soviet power position and possibly bring about a change in Soviet policy’. The tone of this document was also guarded. It was admitted that ‘Moscow’s insistence on rigid control of the Soviet empire makes the development of an organized opposition difficult’. Nonetheless, US policy would still be based on the premise that the Soviet system’s weaknesses could be found within the very nature of its power, thereby creating the ‘potential for deviationism in these Parties from Soviet leadership’. This gesture towards the national communist policy was placed in context with other potential vulnerabilities that could also be exploited. This included disrupting the Soviet system following Stalin’s death and subsequent transfer of power, fomenting indigenous economic and political grievances over the Soviet system of internal controls among the satellite populations, and drawing attention to the falsity of Soviet propaganda.106 The State Department compiled follow-up progress reports on NSC 18/4 and NSC 58/2 one month later. The former report focused on the implementation of economic policies towards Yugoslavia and, therefore, no consideration was given to wider strategic questions.107 On 26 May, the NSC 58/2 follow-up paper made clear that ‘progress’

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towards the achievement of US objectives was extremely problematic. It was readily admitted that all American efforts to cultivate communist heretics had thus far failed. Soviet control over Eastern Europe remained unaffected by US policy, and was bolstered by the continued presence of Soviet occupation forces and the upsurge of ‘drastic purges’ within the Eastern European communist parties. The progress report depicted bleak prospects for the US interim national communist strategy, acknowledging that the ‘Soviets have been successful in warding off any trend which would start one or more of the satellite countries along the road which Yugoslavia has taken’.108 The State Department analysts focused their attention in the bulk of the progress report on the longer-term goal of fostering independent democratic regimes in Eastern Europe by supporting indigenous nationalist forces. Doubt was expressed over this prospect because ‘it cannot be determined with accuracy whether [the Kremlin] have been able to stamp out nationalistic resistance to Soviet domination’. Nonetheless, in a pronounced shift from the original directive NSC 58/2, it was now recommended that all forms of nationalism should be nurtured, and in particular non-communist and anti-communist movements. Although this reflected the evident futility of the national communist approach, suggestions for a realistic strategy to support the more ambitious longer-term goals were still in short supply. Several methods were recommended to undermine Soviet power in its backyard. In particular, the US must ‘rely more heavily on propaganda and on other means’. This included greater coordination of the OPC’s subversive psychological and political warfare capability to counteract the ‘concerted Soviet-Communist campaign’ against US missions and officials in Eastern Europe. Propaganda operations should support the long-term aim to establish free governments, with VOA programming to ‘be supplemented in the near future by radio broadcasts operated by the refugee national committees in the United States’. The psychological warfare campaign ‘is intended to increase confusion, suspicion and fear among the Communist leaders and parties’ in order to subvert Soviet levers of control. As well as targeting the

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leadership and elites of the Soviet bloc, American propaganda would also attempt ‘to fortify the anti-Communist resistance of the masses of the population’. There were hints within this progress report that an even more drastic policy shift had taken place. It was noted that the absence of diplomatic relations with Bulgaria and Albania and ‘the particularly exposed position of the latter, may make it possible to take a somewhat more active line in pursuit of our objectives in these countries than in the other satellites’. This was an innocuous reference to an operation initiated by British intelligence to overthrow Enver Hoxha’s communist regime in Albania. There was no attempt to define a strategic framework to reconcile this revolutionary campaign with less aggressive American operations elsewhere behind the iron curtain. The Albanian operation was simply tacked onto the existing policy even though it seemed to contradict the non-violent principles expressed elsewhere in the paper.109 ***** The second progress report on NSC 58/2 did not resolve the grave strategic difficulties that faced American policymakers in mid-1950, but it did indicate a shift in attitude in the Truman administration from ‘national’ back to anti-communism. Tito had survived the vituperative Stalinist campaign to dislodge him, thanks in small part to American support, but beyond this questionable ‘success’, US policy had utterly failed to alter the political landscape of the Soviet bloc. In fact, none of the short- or long-term US objectives towards Eastern Europe or the Soviet Union delineated in policy papers since November 1948 had been achieved. The State Department now accepted that a further review was needed in light of the minimal impact of American policies since the adoption of NSC 58/2 in December 1949. Weeks before the outbreak of the Korean War, and subsequent implementation of NSC 68, the Truman administration was already turning its back on the cautious policy to foster interim national communist regimes. This policy was

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predicated on not provoking the Kremlin. But now the long-term goal to undermine Soviet control of the satellites would be aligned to the promotion of anti-communist and non-communist movements behind the iron curtain. This shift in emphasis from national communism to non/anti-communism still did not overcome the core dilemma for US strategists: that liberating Eastern Europe without resort to arms was unfeasible in the current climate. Such a methodology was strategically futile while Moscow remained determined to maintain its hegemonic control. The shift to a seemingly more aggressive policy did not translate into a willingness to militarily intervene to support nationalist uprisings behind the iron curtain. Therefore, the ultimate objective of establishing Eastern Europe’s independence from Moscow remained as illusive as ever on the eve of the outbreak of war in Asia.

CHAPTER 4 SYSTEMIC DISORDER: THE LAUNCH OF OPC POLITICAL WARFARE OPERATIONS AGAINST THE SOVIET BLOC FROM 1948

NSC 10/2 was adopted by the US government in June 1948 amidst deepening tensions with Stalin’s Soviet Union. The authorities within NSC 10/2 were unprecedented, reflecting the perception of crisis within the Truman administration that underscored the late 1940s. Washington formally established an extensive peacetime political warfare capability for the first time in its history, primarily to provide greater flexibility to act against the Soviet Union. The creation of the Office of Policy Coordination, housed within the CIA, established the tools and budgetary resources to act beyond conventional diplomatic and military spheres in the unconventional covert realm. By early 1949, the OPC’s operational plans had been approved at the highest levels in Washington, and actions aspiring to undermine and roll back Soviet power on the European continent rapidly ensued.1 In recent years historians have increasingly turned their attention to the clandestine conflict between the United States (US) and the Soviet Union in the early Cold War.2 The historical narrative has moved beyond discussions of ‘containment’ and traditional conceptions of US foreign policy that dominated broader histories of the period.3 NSC 10/2 is now recognised as a salient directive of the early Cold War, but

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less scholarly attention has been paid to the strategic difficulties engendered by the application of political warfare. It has sometimes been assumed that US policy complemented the political warfare campaign against the communist bloc.4 It is important to draw attention to weaknesses in that viewpoint. In 1948 the US strategy towards the Soviet bloc was ambiguous and unclear. A fracture now developed between stated US policy objectives – ultimately, the retraction of Soviet power and influence from the Soviet bloc – and the methods through covert political warfare to achieve this objective. The muddled strategic basis for the US political warfare programme persisted at the policy level for years to come. Strategic infeasibility was a fundamental flaw that also therefore undermined the political warfare campaign on the operational level. From the outset the OPC lacked clear strategic guidelines to inform and direct its political warfare campaign against the Soviet bloc. But this was not true of other areas of US policy. In general, the initiative led by the European Recovery Program to strengthen the economies and political allegiances of Western Europe benefited from extensive strategic consideration by American officials. An important complementary campaign of covert political warfare activities was orchestrated alongside the overt programme by the CIA after the adoption of NSC 4-A in late 1947.5 This often involved covert support (financial, material, intellectual and psychological) to indigenous non-communist and anti-communist groups and individuals in Western Europe who were attempting to challenge local communist groups in their efforts to extend socialist influence in that region. In this period, US policy enjoyed far greater strategic viability in Western Europe than in the Eastern bloc. Washington’s traditional ties – its influence stemming from the war and the projection of American political and military power in the 1940s – were key factors facilitating this success. The American effort in Western Europe also benefited from a sound strategy. US policy objectives towards Western Europe – primarily to stave off the legal and/or subversive rise of indigenous communist groups – were clearly delineated and achievable. The CIA/ OPC was able to coordinate with and complement broader US policies in pursuit of this general objective.

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In Eastern Europe the political situation and the extent of American influence was completely different. The legacy of World War II and Yalta was Soviet dominance. The Truman administration had long since accepted that the US exercised minimal geopolitical influence in the Soviet borderlands. The limits of American power at the edge of the iron curtain raised fundamental questions about US policy objectives towards the Soviet bloc. The broad aspiration to retract Soviet power and influence in the East that was endorsed in NSC 20/4 did not bridge the gap between general policy goals and specific measures. As has been noted in the previous chapter, the policy papers produced after NSC 20/4 similarly failed to deliver strategic clarification, resulting in an ambiguous and often muddled and unrealistic policy towards the Soviet bloc. The precise role of political warfare in the pursuit of generalised US policy aims was therefore not elucidated, even though operational momentum was generated by NSC 10/2. Not only was the US strategy towards the Soviet bloc muddled but the development of political warfare machinery was overshadowed by bureaucratic wrangling over control of and responsibility for the new programme. As a result, the OPC’s position within the bureaucracy was also ambiguous. The new organisation was granted considerable autonomy within a nebulous command structure. This facilitated its rapid expansion and the initiation of a wide range of operations that were only loosely coordinated with the US Departments of State and Defense, the CIA and the NSC. NSC 10/2 vested responsibility for overseeing political warfare in the Director of Central Intelligence. Key to this was ensuring that the OPC was properly accountable and coordinated with the general thrust of mainstream American policy. But the chain of command from the OPC to the CIA was undercut by the Policy Planning Staff, revisiting a long-running dispute during the drafting of NSC 10/2 over whether or not the Agency – charged with responsibility for operations – should also have policy authority over the new organisation. NSC 10/2 constituted a temporary compromise. As soon as the directive was adopted, Kennan moved to shift the authority for political warfare away from the CIA to the Departments of State and Defense while leaving the Agency with full responsibility.

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The key consequence of the convoluted CIA– PPS dispute and Kennan’s eventual administrative triumph was that the oversight mechanisms for political warfare were significantly weakened. Instead of the CIA maintaining clear authority over political warfare (in the same way that it controlled psychological warfare under NSC 4-A), loose and ineffective oversight procedures between the OPC and the departments were installed. This led to the breakdown of bureaucratic structures and safeguards envisioned in NSC 10/2 to ensure that America’s new covert political warfare capability was implemented as a coordinated component of US Cold War policy. In practice, the combination of a broad mandate and the lack of adequate strategic guidance and organisational accountability stimulated uncoordinated operational momentum. The OPC evolved into a de facto policymaker, as well as operator, once its deference to the CIA’s chain of command had been revoked. PPS intended to utilise the new organisation as an instrument of departmental policy, but lax supervision controls resulted in the OPC also initiating and implementing its own plans under the dynamic leadership of Assistant Director for Policy Coordination (ADPC) Frank Wisner. The OPC filled the strategic vacuum at the policy level by energetically and aggressively pursuing anti-communist activities behind the iron curtain. An action-oriented operational culture soon flourished that, in general, went unchecked by Washington for the remainder of the Truman years and, to a lesser extent, the Eisenhower era. This unchecked approach to Soviet bloc operations was potentially disastrous. The implementation of field operations without a coherent strategic and administrative framework resulted in the execution of flawed, risky and ill-fated revolutionary activities. The first major flash-point of the Cold War, the Soviet blockade of Berlin, indicated the serious extent to which antagonism had increased between Washington and Moscow by mid-1948. The OPC’s aggressive actions against the Soviet bloc far exceeded the cautious policies of the State Department and risked dangerously escalating tensions further. Although the OPC’s contribution to the successful attainment of American objectives in Eastern Europe under NSC

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20/4 was negligible, its actions ratcheted up tensions and mutual suspicions between the West and the communist world.

The administration of political warfare post-NSC 10/2 Superficially, NSC 10/2 resolved the long-standing CIA– PPS dispute over bureaucratic control of an expanded political warfare capability. In reality, NSC 10/2’s mediation of administrative differences masked the Planning Staff’s determination that the State Department, rather than the CIA, should exert principal direction over political warfare in peacetime. Kennan’s Planning Staff accepted Agency authority over the OPC in the final drafting stages of NSC 10/2 as a temporary expedient to secure the congressional funds required to establish the organisation and initiate operations. This ‘compromise’ diminished the State Department’s nominal control. But the PPS anticipated that it would be able to assert the State Department’s authority over the OPC once NSC 10/2 had been approved. This was the case. The PPS intervened shortly after the adoption of NSC 10/2, significantly altering the procedural arrangements for planning and implementing political warfare projects stipulated in NSC 10/2. Agency authority was swept away and replaced with loose informal mechanisms for the planning and approval of the OPC’s operations. Following the intervention, this was to be the responsibility of departmental representatives, not the DCI. Kennan needed to overcome two interrelated challenges before departmental authority over political warfare could be assured. First, the Agency’s control over the OPC needed to be cancelled, to be replaced by the PPS. This was problematic because Secretary of State Marshall objected to direct State Department responsibility for these controversial political warfare operations. Therefore, official responsibility would still need to reside outside the department’s jurisdiction. Attempts to remove the CIA’s authority had already impeded the implementation of political warfare for several months, but the approval of NSC 10/2 removed the CIA’s principal bargaining chip (adoption of the directive) in its dispute with the PPS. As a result, overcoming its opposition after NSC 10/2 was

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straightforward. The second key stumbling block was to assert departmental authority following the removal of Agency control, in order to ensure that the OPC received adequate external direction and oversight. Resolving this issue of policy guidance and the supervision of the OPC was much more difficult and dragged on in the bureaucracy for several years. On 6 August 1948 Kennan attempted to achieve both key objectives – to remove CIA authority and assert departmental authority in its place – at a meeting with Hillenkoetter, Souers and several veterans of the earlier NSC 10/2 dispute. Kennan was emboldened by the Berlin crisis, thus sweeping away past arrangements and bureaucratic obstacles. Agreement was reached to remove the DCI’s authority over the OPC (as delineated in NSC 10/2) to be replaced by departmental control. The new agreement decisively shaped the OPC’s future development and the implementation of political warfare operations against the Soviet bloc because it removed the tight command structure over the OPC that would have prevailed under the CIA’s close supervision. With relative ease, Kennan rescinded the DCI’s authorities stipulated by NSC 10/2, by reassuring Hillenkoetter that the departments would pay ‘due deference to the [CIA’s] organizational requirements’ following the transfer of authority for the political warfare programme to them.6 This was a necessary palliative to ensure that the CIA continued to accept administrative responsibility for housing the OPC but it was a thinly disguised defeat for Hillenkoetter. The new arrangement vested full policy control in the Departments of State and Defense, from whom, Kennan declared, the OPC must receive its ‘policy guidance and direction’. For this to occur, the CIA leadership must grant the OPC considerable autonomy from the Agency. Meanwhile, the Departments of State and Defense would establish direct channels into the OPC, hidden from outside view, through the appointment of departmental liaison representatives. These officials would feed projects complementing departmental policy directly into the new office, not through the DCI. To emphasise that Hillenkoetter must not interfere in this process, Kennan insisted that the head of the OPC ‘must have the

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fullest and freest access’ to these representatives. He justified the revision of NSC 10/2 by affirming that ‘political warfare is essentially an instrument of foreign policy’ and so ‘the activity which serves this aim must function to the fullest extent possible as a direct instrumentality’ of the departments. The OPC’s director Frank Wisner further whittled down the DCI’s influence by insisting that he should not have to submit political warfare projects through the CIA’s administrative hierarchy but instead pass them directly to the departmental representatives. Hillenkoetter gave in, on the modest condition that the DCI would be kept informed of all ‘important’ projects and decisions. Hillenkoetter accepted that in peacetime the OPC should have direct guidance from the State Department. But in doing so he raised the divisive issue that the State Department must also assume political responsibility for the political warfare operations that it would now control. This matter had long hampered efforts to adopt NSC 4-A and NSC 10/2 but Kennan was not about to get bogged down in another protracted tussle with Hillenkoetter. He nimbly brushed aside the thorny issue of responsibility by declaring his personal accountability as the State Department’s designated representative to the political warfare office.7 Hillenkoetter meekly accepted Kennan’s terms at the meeting on 6 August 1948. Faced with the PPS’s relentless determination to control the political warfare programme, he was unwilling to continue the fight to retain the DCI’s authority over it. For the PPS, the long-running dispute was primarily a policy issue. It made sense that the Planning Staff should plan and direct its own programme of political warfare operations. In contrast, for the CIA leadership, the struggle was based on the administrative desirability of retaining authority over operations for which it had responsibility. Hillenkoetter had wanted to control risky operations that could hurt its reputation. The OPC was now granted considerable autonomy as a result of NSC 10/2’s broad operational mandate and the new command arrangements brokered by Kennan, Souers and Wisner, but this did not markedly reduce the Agency’s liability for OPC activities. The CIA retained formal responsibility for providing administrative

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cover, but Kennan transferred responsibility for operational direction and policy guidance to the departments. This revisited the concept formulated during the drafting of NSC 10/2 that the departments would guide political warfare through the Operations Advisory Committee or ‘10/2 Panel’.8 The proposed body had been stricken from NSC 10/2, but Kennan now reasserted through the liaison arrangements the notion of departmental oversight. These departmental links were informal and highly classified, so the buck would still effectively stop with the Agency should any operation be exposed. ‘A cardinal consideration in the establishment of Wisner’s office under NSC 10/2’, Kennan later reminded Lovett, ‘was that, while this Department can take no responsibility for his operations, we should nevertheless maintain a firm guiding hand.’9 Key to this was Marshall’s stipulation that the OPC’s operations must remain covert in order to conceal Washington’s role. As long as the departments could plausibly deny responsibility for OPC activities to the outside world, then the State Department’s accountability for political warfare would be minimised. Senior CIA officials were extremely reluctant to allow the departments to usurp its authorities. In October 1948 the CIA’s legal counsel Lawrence Houston attempted to persuade DCI Hillenkoetter to reverse his decision to surrender control over the OPC and to resume the struggle for the powers vested in the DCI by NSC 10/2. On 19 October, soon after the OPC was established, Houston sent legal advice to Hillenkoetter repudiating Kennan’s system of control over the OPC, based on the 6 August ‘understanding’. Houston argued that the DCI ‘must look’ to NSC 10/2 as ‘the official mandate’ by which ‘to ascertain his responsibilities’ and not be cajoled by overbearing departmental officials. Houston reminded Hillenkoetter that ‘this mandate on its face places full administrative and operational control and responsibility on the Director’. The DCI was required to obtain ‘policy guidance’ for political warfare from the departments, but not transfer full control to them. Houston advised Hillenkoetter that ‘steps be taken to make a final clarification on responsibility and control for OPC covert operations’ in order to settle their ‘divergence in views’.10

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Houston’s argument was legally sound, but there were several reasons why Hillenkoetter was no longer willing to contest the bureaucratic arrangements for political warfare, having already ceded his authority to the departments. During the debates over NSC 10/2 the PPS had suggested that the CIA’s secret intelligence function should be removed and housed in a separate unit alongside the proposed political warfare capability.11 This was a direct threat to the Agency’s operational role, but the danger had been averted with the conclusion of NSC 10/2. Political warfare under the OPC was explicitly separated from the secret intelligence mandate, which was retained by the CIA. Hillenkoetter, therefore, had little to gain from further skirmishes with the PPS. As a result, Hillenkoetter discarded Houston’s legal advice. By doing so, he tacitly accepted that the DCI’s authorities over political warfare under NSC 10/2 should be removed. This also signalled that future opportunities would not be taken up to reassert the DCI’s control under his directorship.12 Instead, the CIA’s weak bureaucratic position was reinforced by the undermining of Hillenkoetter’s credibility within the Truman administration during the final 18 months of his tenure as DCI, beginning with a critical report written by Allen Dulles’ Intelligence Survey Group.13 His demise precluded any inclination to regain the authority to control political warfare.14 It was not restored until General Walter Bedell Smith assumed the directorship in the autumn of 1950.15 Full authority to direct the OPC’s political warfare operations was now transferred to the Departments of State and Defense (and later to the Joint Chiefs of Staff as well) through a ‘liaison’ role that encompassed two key responsibilities. First, the departments must ensure that political warfare planning and implementation was strategically linked to broader policies and consonant with general national objectives. Second, the departments now took on responsibility for closer oversight of the day-to-day development of the OPC’s plans and operations. Kennan was keen to limit the number of departmental officials who would participate in these roles by having contact with the OPC. In October 1948 he recommended to Lovett that the State

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Department should only commit ‘a small body of personnel – perhaps no more than five men – who have Foreign Service and Departmental experience’ for this task. These officials would ‘be designated to guide Wisner’s operation, both from within this Department and within Wisner’s own office’.16 Kennan’s motives here were twofold. First, it would concentrate the power to direct the OPC in the hands of the PPS. Second, limited access to the OPC would also minimise the chance of security breaches, helping to maintain a shroud of secrecy over the operations. However, several weaknesses undermined the new arrangement. Excessive reliance was placed on too narrow a base, jeopardising the adequate external direction of the OPC. This in turn created a vacuum of accountability because the departments could shirk formal responsibility for the OPC. The revision of NSC 10/2 loosened the chain of command between policymakers, managers and field operators, resulting in a precarious oversight arrangement. The new set-up placed Kennan at the apex of the political warfare programme in peacetime as the State Department’s designated liaison officer to the OPC.17 Kennan was the key arbiter for ensuring the OPC’s coordination and consistency with basic US policy objectives. This reflected Kennan’s confidence in his ability to singlehandedly formulate US policy in the early Cold War. Notwithstanding his professional and intellectual credentials, on a practical level Kennan overestimated his capacity to juggle the OPC liaison role with his numerous other demanding responsibilities as head of the PPS. This was a shaky arrangement. Excessive responsibility for what became an enormous task was concentrated on one small office. Meanwhile, the necessary safeguards and oversight mechanisms were completely inadequate once NSC 10/2’s provisions had been modified under the 6 August ‘understanding’. Kennan was not solely to blame for the establishment of this unsatisfactory administrative arrangement. His seniors in the executive branch also failed to recognise that the oversight safeguards in the new set-up were inadequate. This was primarily because political warfare was an enclave initiative of the Planning Staff. It was not widely understood, accepted or even known about by the

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majority of officials in Truman’s government. But there were serious potential drawbacks in establishing a loosely controlled political warfare organisation with a broad mandate and extensive capabilities. Without proper integration and accountability there was considerable risk from the outset that the OPC could pursue operations independently, without the necessary safeguard mechanisms to ensure consistency with broader government policies. The new set-up showed signs of unravelling almost immediately. The most significant factor was that Kennan’s influence to direct US foreign policy was diminishing during 1949 and 1950. His decline was connected to his inability to devise a credible strategic application for the political warfare programme that had been his brainchild.18 Kennan’s attempts over the course of 1949 to link the strategic and operational strands of political warfare to initiate a unified strategy towards Western and Eastern Europe under Program A failed. His proposal to unify and neutralise Germany alienated him within the Truman administration. It was Kennan’s desire to design a viable strategy utilising political warfare to bring an end to the Cold War that actually pushed him away from the foreign policy mainstream. On the other hand, the demise of Program A undermined the strategic viability of political warfare. The decision to pursue the partition of Germany and to rearm Western Europe isolated Kennan’s strategic conceptualisation of political warfare, in turn exacerbating its status as an enclave strategy. Kennan recognised that the long-term division of Germany would inevitably result in a semi-permanent schism across Europe.19 Consolidation of two rival politico–economic and military power blocs would undercut his concept of what political warfare could hope to achieve. For Kennan, covert operations were not an end in themselves. He quickly became realistic about what political warfare could achieve, and understood that this type of programme needed to be harnessed with diplomatic and economic initiatives in order to have any meaningful impact on Soviet power in Europe. This is what Program A embodied for Kennan. But the rejection of Program A and the pursuit of an alternative course that would intrinsically embolden and antagonise the Soviets left the PPS’s political warfare programme isolated and impotent.

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By mid-1949 the political warfare programme was uncoordinated and remote from the mainstream of US foreign policy, even though it was still only nascent. The priority for the Truman administration was now to consolidate Western strength through military, economic and political invigoration of America’s allies. Kennan’s strategic conceptualisation of US Cold War policy was out of kilter with the Truman administration. Program A was rejected in favour of the creation of a pro-Western Federal Democratic Republic of West Germany. Meanwhile, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization was established to bolster Western defensive military strength. These steps heightened Cold War tensions, isolating the political warfare programme. It soon became apparent that the limited programme of covert operations was utterly inadequate in undermining or even softening Soviet hegemony in Eastern Europe.20 As Kennan’s aura as the master strategist of the Truman administration receded in 1949, the link between the PPS and OPC became increasingly based on operational guidance rather than strategic direction. Administrative changes within the PPS reflected this. By March 1950 Kennan felt compelled to relinquish his OPC liaison role in order to concentrate on directing the Planning Staff. He had already relinquished his position as the State Department’s representative on the NSC staff in December 1948, with George Butler taking on that role.21 The PPS was struggling to cope with the enormous scope of its duties, thus forcing Kennan to take on more staff in September 1948.22 By spring 1950 Kennan was feeling exasperated at the lack of support being provided to the OPC and the political warfare programme across the government. In particular he was irked by the OPC’s inability to circumvent US immigration law in order to bring Eastern European anti-communists into the US or to formally employ them in the US government. McCarthy-era paranoia about Soviet subversion of American foreign policy, and the domestic anti-communist witch-hunts, were prevalent at this time. It was also politically dangerous to associate with former communists and other political dissidents with a chequered background, but these were exactly the type of people that the PPS

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and OPC wanted to work with, because of their valuable knowledge of the Soviet-communist enemy. Kennan wrote to his boss Webb that members of the PPS ( John Paton Davies in particular) were being placed in professional jeopardy by their links to the OPC programme. For this reason, and in characteristically morose form, Kennan urged Webb not to appoint a successor to act as the State Department’s policy liaison to the OPC.23 Kennan’s recommendation was discarded and Robert Joyce was subsequently appointed as PPS liaison officer to the OPC. This change in personnel also had a bearing on the strategic employment of political warfare. For all his operational talents, Joyce was far less interested than Kennan in connecting the OPC’s activities in Eastern Europe to a strategy. His attributes lay in the development of operations, making him ‘more CIA than the CIA’ according to a Wisner aide, Gilbert Greenway.24 Joyce was a veteran activist and personal friend of Wisner’s, having served in the Balkans with the Office of Strategic Services during the war.25 He was ‘a doer, not an ivory tower thinker’ in the words of the OPC’s chief of special operations Frank Lindsay, sharply distinguishing him from Kennan.26 Joyce, like Wisner, had witnessed Russian occupation policies in Eastern Europe towards the end of the war and his wartime service made him professionally and personally predisposed to the implementation of operations rather than the methodical deliberation over strategies. For instance, Joyce had a strong interest in Yugoslavia because of his pre-war service in the US Legation in Belgrade and his wartime role in the OSS, where he infiltrated antiNazi agents to assist the resistance led by Tito’s partisans.27 As a result of his professional instinct and inclination, Joyce tended to exercise minimal restraint over the OPC’s operations.28 Kennan’s waning influence did not result in the collapse of the August 1948 arrangement and a return to NSC 10/2’s oversight provisions. The OPC was not brought back under the authority of DCI Hillenkoetter, whose reluctance to undertake controversial operations would have been a restraint. The departmental channels to the OPC were maintained, but the informal liaison between state, defense and the OPC was predominantly focused on specific

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operational details rather than on broader strategic issues. A symbiotic relationship developed as departmental policy guidance shifted to cooperation. Wisner’s agency conducted the operations proposed by the Planning Staff, without excessive interference from them. The tenuous oversight of the OPC exacerbated the widening disparity between official policy and operations in the field as the OPC enjoyed greater autonomy to plan and implement its own projects. Kennan later recollected that he should never have ‘accepted for the PPS the duty of giving political advice to Wisner’s outfit’, reflecting that ‘we are all prone to error’.29 But the greatest error of all proved to be the failure of the Truman administration to close down or at least restrain the OPC once the key strategist orchestrating its operations – Kennan – had removed himself from the planning loop.

The rise of the OPC One important factor behind the OPC’s rapid expansion was the dynamic leadership of Frank Wisner. Kennan was not personally acquainted with Wisner before his appointment, although they soon forged social links at the Georgetown ‘Sunday Night Suppers’.30 Kennan was moderately impressed with Wisner’s credentials when recommending him to lead the new political warfare organisation. ‘I personally have no knowledge of his ability,’ Kennan informed Lovett, but ‘his qualifications seem reasonably good, and I should think that it would be relatively easy to spare him for this purpose.’ Wisner was by all accounts an energetic and charismatic man who, like Joyce, had served with the OSS in wartime Eastern Europe.31 Kennan initially underestimated Wisner’s personal drive and anticommunist zeal, assuming that he could control both Wisner and the OPC. The OPC chief was ambitious and ideologically driven to anticommunist convictions following his direct contact with ‘the greatest moral outrage of his life, the Soviet takeover of Romania’. Wisner’s obsessive anxieties about Russia were fully developed before the end of World War II. His obsessive anti-communist position was described as ‘excessive’ by OSS colleague Arthur Schlesinger Jr, and played a part in his later mental decline.32 Kennan’s endorsement of

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Wisner’s appointment to head the OPC ‘on the recommendations of people who know him’ therefore left room for surprise in relation to his aggressive pursuit of anti-communist actions at the head of the OPC.33 Nonetheless, Wisner’s dynamism and his anti-communist beliefs do not explain why operations lacked a strategic framework from 1949 onwards. Wisner accepted that the departments would provide the OPC with ‘policy guidance’; it was not therefore a ‘maverick’ organisation belying a ‘Donovan Tradition’ under his command.34 It did not abuse the power and mandate granted to it by the NSC, but it did maximise bureaucratic openings, readily taking on operational opportunities to propel its growth. This reflected a general tendency of new organisations to expand in order to carve out a role within Washington’s community of competitive bureaucracies. The Central Intelligence Group had similarly pressed for expansion in 1946– 7 by taking on the secret intelligence mandate while the rival departmental intelligence units circled menacingly overhead. A salient factor in the OPC’s rise was the lack of an adequate external review procedure of its activities. Primary responsibility rested with the departments under their liaison function, and ultimately with the NSC. But assessing the strategic feasibility of operations was never part of an ongoing routine. Instead Wisner was presented with a broad operational mandate and capability, strengthened by aspirational policy statements from the State Department calling for the retraction of Soviet power in Europe. This played into the OPC’s hands. Wisner interpreted NSC 10/2 as a ‘broad license’ to launch energetically into operations.35 Meanwhile, the new organisation expanded its base of operations, carving a niche for itself in Washington and facilitating ever-increasing budget allocations.

The activation of the OPC The OPC was officially activated on 1 September 1948.36 Wisner spent the remainder of the year organising the new agency and planning a programme of activities. Preliminary operational plans were coordinated with representatives of the Army, Navy, Air Force,

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JCS and State Department at a series of meetings of an advisory council. Hillenkoetter’s surrender to the departments meant that the CIA was not represented, but in accordance with the August 6 ‘understanding’, in late October Wisner transmitted a general outline of the preliminary plans to Hillenkoetter to ensure that he remained ‘informed’.37 Wisner was obliged to keep on the good side of the Agency because it held the OPC’s purse strings, even if it did not exert policy control over its activities. It was an awkward arrangement that cut the CIA entirely out of the planning loop, at the same time that it was expected to provide cover and funding for the OPC’s missions. To placate Hillenkoetter, Wisner reassured him that they would review more specific plans together once they had been finalised. But the DCI was now out of the planning loop. This review would not take place before the portfolio of operations had first been submitted for approval to the departments. During the preparatory phase, steps were taken by the State Department to ensure that the OPC would be tied into the wider US strategy in Western Europe. The PPS began feeding ‘policy guidance’ as early as the end of August 1948.38 In late September, Kennan sent a letter via Lovett to US Secretary of Defense Forrestal, in which the State Department formally requested full cooperation of the US military authorities in Germany with the activities of the new organisation. The OPC’s ability to operate in Germany was of singular importance to the political warfare effort envisaged by the PPS, because of its geographic location on the edge of the iron curtain. It was also the primary site of Soviet refugees and political deserters who were scattered among the teeming displaced persons camps in the post-war years. Kennan’s appeal for military support was based on the functional concern that ‘Wisner is going to encounter, as one of his first major obstacles, the problem of cooperation with the Army in Germany.’ Kennan hoped an official request would grease the wheels to provide the OPC with a ‘boost’ in its initial dealings with the military services.39 The effect of this approach was positive on the strategic as well as the functional level. It established an early precedent of contact to foster a constructive working relationship between the Departments of State and Defense and the OPC regarding covert

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activities in Germany. Nurturing a harmonious spirit of common purpose was essential to the coordination of military, diplomatic and political warfare policies across Western Europe. Forrestal was in ‘wholehearted agreement’ with Lovett regarding the desirability of full military cooperation in support of the OPC’s activities in Germany. The US Secretary of Defense permitted Wisner to hold discussions with Army officials who concurred with the activities and authorities he proposed. Details were transmitted to General Clay in Germany to ensure Clay’s inclusion in the initial phases of the OPC planning.40 The OPC also liaised with the Economic Cooperation Administration (ECA), the US government agency responsible for administering Marshall Plan aid to Western Europe. This again ensured that the OPC’s activities complemented the running of the ERP in the participating Western European countries. In particular, the OPC assisted the Marshall Plan by engaging in propaganda activities and efforts to influence organised labour in France and Italy, as these countries were still regarded as the most vulnerable due to the popularity of their indigenous communist movements.41 One historian goes so far as to say that Wisner exploited his previous State Department position to affix the OPC as a ‘virtual appendage to the Marshall Plan organization’. By doing this he could commandeer its resources for ‘men, foreign currency, and official cover to OPC in its covert campaign to compete with the Russians at every “unofficial” level of European life’.42 Striving towards such ends, on 16 November 1948, Wisner met with the ECA administrator Paul Hoffman and European Ambassador Averell Harriman.43 Wisner’s motivation was primarily functional rather than strategic. He hoped to secure invaluable access to the ERP counterpart funds for the OPC’s operations in Western Europe. One condition of the original Marshall Plan deal was that beneficiary nations had to contribute an equal amount in local currency of all ERP allocations they received from the US, 95 per cent of which would be used for Marshall Plan programmes. The other 5 per cent would be reserved by the US government, amounting to a pot of roughly US$200 million per year that had no designated purpose.44 Having secured agreement with Hoffman and Harriman, Wisner approached the acting ECA administrator, Richard Bissell, who was

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initially ‘somewhat baffled by the request’ from the OPC to have access to the counterpart funds, because he was at that time ‘very uninformed about covert activities’. Nonetheless, Wisner reassured Bissell of the OPC’s legitimate need for the money, which was duly authorised.45 The counterpart funds were a particularly useful source to finance the OPC’s early support of non-communist labour movements in Italy and France before more long-term and lucrative sources of funding had been secured. The Special Procedures Group’s secret distribution of cash to pro-Western interests in spring 1948 served as the template for these OPC activities. This liaison also had beneficial strategic consequences by tying the OPC into the ECA’s strategic framework. Bissell himself recognised the advantages of close collaboration, stating in his memoirs that ‘had we known more we would have regarded OPC’s activities as increasing the chances of success’.46 It was by no means a perfect arrangement and there were some operational glitches along the way. Wisner himself noted his concerns in late 1950 about the prevalence of ‘loosetalk’ by ‘certain ECA labor and public relations people’ and some ‘improprieties as regards the use of counterpart funds’.47 Nevertheless, the establishment of a mutually beneficial working relationship between the two agencies allowed middle- and high-level administration officials outside the small political warfare policy loop access to OPC projects. This in turn meant a measure of influence over the OPC operations planned within the ECA’s jurisdiction, facilitating the coordination of US policies in Western Europe by a diverse group of implementing agencies. The OPC’s experience in the East totally contrasted to its Western operations. There was no parallel process of liaison between the OPC officials and American representatives or organisations dealing with Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. This was not due to an inherent failure of liaison but of strategic planning. The US Departments of State and Defense, the ECA and the White House all participated in the development of Western European policy formulation. But during the OPC’s preparatory phase it was not similarly assimilated into an operational or organisational framework for Soviet bloc policy

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because there was no pre-existing structure or strategic approach into which its programmes could be integrated. The void in US strategic planning for Eastern Europe was compounded by an inadequate organisational structure in the field. This situation was exacerbated by the declarations of persona non grata to American representatives during the purges and show trials by communist authorities in Hungary and Bulgaria in 1949 and the undermining of US missions throughout the region.48 This represented a diminishment of what was already weak US influence behind the iron curtain, but the strategic vacuum provided an organisational opportunity for the OPC. It enhanced the OPC’s operational utility within the Truman administration as it carved out a unique role to challenge Soviet power within the communist bloc through its political warfare mandate and capability. The need for action was made pertinent by the palpable sense of emergency gripping the Truman administration as communist regimes tightened their control over Eastern Europe. Nothing fuelled the American perception that action was necessary more than the fall of the Benesˇ government in Czechoslovakia in February 1948, followed by the death in mysterious circumstances of former Foreign Minister (and noncommunist) Jan Masaryk two weeks later. The communisation of Eastern Europe, in itself, did not directly threaten US national security, but the perception that this indicated the Kremlin’s intrinsic expansionist agenda cast a shadow over the security of America’s key allies and recipients of Marshall Plan aid in Western Europe.

Sanctioning a broad operational mandate In early 1949 Wisner was authorised to proceed with operations despite the Truman administration’s inability to establish a coherent strategic framework linking Western and Eastern Europe. Exacerbating this was ineffective machinery to guide and regulate OPC activities. The OPC gradually moved beyond its operational role to exert de facto influence on American policy against the Soviet bloc. On 6 January 1949, the State Department unconditionally approved the OPC’s list of projects developed during the interdepartmental

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advisory council meetings during the winter of 1948. The approved OPC programme consisted of the selective collection of operations first suggested by the PPS in its ‘inauguration of organized political warfare’ memorandum of May 1948, as well as a far broader range of activities sanctioned under NSC 10/2 that incorporated military activities (in general plans for preparatory missions).49 Without foolproof oversight procedures there was a real risk that the boundary between peacetime and wartime operations could be transgressed if the delicate OPC departmental liaison arrangement failed. The initial proposal divided political warfare roles within the OPC into five functional groups: psychological warfare, political warfare, economic warfare, a preventative direct action group that was to begin planning and training for the wartime measures requested by the military services, and a group undertaking various miscellaneous responsibilities. Under the rubric of psychological warfare media, radio and other ‘miscellaneous’ activities would be undertaken, including ‘direct mail, poison pen, rumors etc’. These measures were a throwback to NSC 4-A and the activities initiated by the SPG a year before. The OPC inherited the leftovers from the SPG, including a modest amount of unspent funds and a small selection of propaganda and covert financing projects. Political warfare was defined as support of underground resistance movements, employing displaced persons and refugees, encouraging defections from the Soviet bloc and aiding anti-communists in ‘free’ countries. These missions were consistent with earlier PPS plans and NSC 10/2, but unlike the envisaged psychological warfare measures, these actions urgently required strategic clarification prior to their employment. Psychological warfare was merely a method to obstruct, harass and discredit Soviet-led communism. The political warfare measures potentially went much further in aspiring to break up or significantly undermine communist regimes, complementing the general goals endorsed in NSC 20/4. But the OPC did not receive more specific strategic guidance to clarify implementation of the aspirations stated within NSC 20/4 to ensure the advisability and feasibility of its political warfare operations.

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The third functional group was responsible for economic warfare comprising commodity and fiscal operations. By early 1949, the PPS began to consider the uses of economic warfare to counter communist power, particularly in light of Tito’s ‘defection’ from the Soviet bloc. But this was only after the OPC had been authorised to proceed with economic warfare operations. While the PPS conveyed grand aspirations about harnessing ‘Titoism’ to break up Moscow’s centripetal domination of its satellites, at the same time it quietly admitted that economic measures offered the best practical opportunity to make an impact.50 The fourth functional group could potentially drive the OPC into peacetime operations of a far more aggressive character than the PPS had originally intended. A preventative direct action division was to begin planning and training for the wartime measures requested by the military services. This step was taken because of widespread fears in military circles that war with the Soviet Union was imminent. Preparatory wartime measures included the support of guerrillas, sabotage, counter-sabotage, demolition and evacuation programmes. The military also called for the OPC to start establishing ‘staybehind networks’ in Western Europe in peacetime. Small, welltrained groups were to be developed that would become active in the event of a Soviet military invasion of Western Europe, both as sources of intelligence and as points of resistance behind enemy lines. The final functional group was to undertake various miscellaneous responsibilities, including the preparation of front organisations and war plans, as well as to house the OPC’s administrative staff.51 On 6 January 1949 Kennan authorised the OPC projects on behalf of the State Department. The proposal would have also been sent to the Pentagon for Joseph McNarney’s endorsement, although approval in peacetime was principally the State Department’s responsibility. It is unlikely that it went higher up the chain of command, to either the US Secretary of State or Defense, or to the White House. Marshall was winding down in his capacity as Secretary of State, while Forrestal was cutting an increasingly erratic and marginal figure at the Pentagon. This indicates the lack of an authoritative external overseer to assess the OPC’s plans. Kennan did not recognise the potential pitfalls, one of which was that such an unconditional endorsement might allow the

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OPC to exceed the operational mandate that he envisaged. Kennan kept faith with the arrangement of a selective narrow base from which the OPC would be given strategic guidance in order to personally influence the direction of the OPC’s activities. The inadequacy of strategic planning and overseeing was worsened because operational guidance and liaison channels into the OPC were founded on a much wider base than the procedures for strategic direction. The flow of strategic guidance was restricted to a selective minimal group of officials, but operational advice began to burgeon from a more diverse range of officials in the military as well as the Planning Staff, confusing overseeing responsibilities. This was first indicated when the OPC’s inaugural list of operations went beyond the Planning Staff’s earlier political warfare proposal, reflecting the military influence imparted by NSC 10/2. The inclusion of wartime ‘preventative direct action’ projects in the OPC planning paper did not raise any eyebrows in the PPS because military representatives had consulted the OPC alongside the State Department during the advisory council consultations. Kennan inadvertently gave impetus to operations over strategy through his endorsement of the OPC proposal, informing Wisner that ‘this presentation contains the minimum of what is required from the foreign policy standpoint in the way of covert operations during the coming year’. Kennan had in mind the functional groups responsible for psychological and political warfare, rather than military wartime planning. He told Wisner that there ‘may be one or two instances in which we will have to ask you to add to the list of functions set forth in this representation’. This was not a call for the blanket expansion of OPC projects such as peacetime paramilitary operations behind the iron curtain. Instead, Kennan hoped to maintain flexibility because the PPS would likely develop supplementary initiatives over the coming months in order to augment the political warfare programmes already requested of the OPC. This approach demonstrates that the Planning Staff was still getting to grips with the ways in which the OPC would be utilised. It goes some way to explaining why the departmental liaison officers were willing to give the OPC considerable autonomy to plan

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operations from the outset, even while Kennan was still at the apex of responsibility. Kennan’s judgement that the OPC would be asked to undertake more projects indicated that policy was still being drawn up in an ad hoc fashion within the State Department. It also encouraged Wisner to adopt an expansive approach to political warfare. The implication that Wisner’s initial list of projects was insufficient tacitly promoted further OPC planning beyond its first set of proposals, placing greater emphasis on action rather than a selective strategic methodology. Indeed, the need for action in the Cold War appeared urgent. ‘As the international situation develops,’ Kennan informed Wisner, ‘every day makes more evident the importance of the role which will have to be played by covert operations if our national interests are to be adequately protected.’52 As a consequence, the strategic dilemma concerning the feasibility of overcoming communist entrenchment in Eastern Europe was eclipsed by the operational impetus to get projects under way.

The OPC’s autonomy and the breakdown of policy direction After Kennan’s decline, the lack of strategic overseeing of political warfare opened up the space for operations to proceed separate from policy. Operational momentum was maintained by the OPC’s leadership, but strategic linkage to policy objectives was tenuous. The overburdened departmental representatives did not see it as their role to supervise the day-to-day minutiae of the OPC activities. They wanted to be consulted on the largest political warfare projects and to supply their own initiatives for the OPC to implement. According to one observer, the weekly liaison meetings with Wisner often ‘degenerated into a sort of stereotyped chore for all concerned’.53 The OPC operations were not closely evaluated and where necessary restrained by the liaison officials who tended to be sympathetic to the projects suggested by Wisner and his team. Even when Paul Nitze replaced Kennan as director of the PPS, the OPC departmental meetings continued to be ‘a kind of validating board that met in Wisner’s office’, according to Richard Stilwell, who headed the OPC’s Asian Division after the outbreak of the Korean

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War.54 Minimal supervision was undertaken, while the policy guidance that the OPC received was so vague that it left the OPC with ‘maximum opportunity for project development’.55 The transmission of ‘guidance’ to the OPC was haphazard at best, fostering a culture of independence whereby the OPC initiated projects without any meaningful external scrutiny or control.56 The weekly OPC department meetings proved totally inadequate to manage and coordinate the multiplying raft of programmes initiated within the OPC. One OPC official recalled how Wisner and his staff ‘arrogated themselves total power, with no inhibiting precedent. They could do what they wanted, just as long as the “higher authority,” as we called the president, did not expressly forbid it’.57 The liaison arrangement also nurtured bureaucratic compartmentalisation over the planning and implementation of political warfare projects against the Soviet bloc. Compartmentalisation was a real problem that could fragment the policy position of different offices, undercutting a unified approach to dealing with the Soviet bloc. For instance, the PPS retained exclusive access to the OPC, while other sections within the State Department, including the geographic desks and foreign embassies, were cut out of the political warfare planning loop. Knowledge of NSC 10/2 was limited to a handful of officials in order to maintain tight security over the OPC’s activities.58 But the ‘need to know’ approach splintered policies between different sections of the same department. Under this set-up, strategic planning incorporating political warfare towards the Eastern bloc could not be unified with the regional desks. Despite having primary interest in Soviet bloc policy, the State Department’s Eastern European specialists and diplomats were effectively excluded from the OPC’s affairs. They could promote policies towards the Soviet bloc independently of the PPS, but no mechanisms existed to ensure that these corresponded with political warfare projects. This left ample opportunity for wasteful duplication or serious conflicts of interest. The OPC enjoyed generous latitude and soon developed into a ‘quasi-independent entity’.59 Its autonomy, originally encouraged to separate the OPC from superfluous ties to the CIA, fostered an operational culture of expansion rather than regulation, which was

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successfully consolidated by Wisner. He ensured that the OPC became practically self-sufficient, and was therefore not beholden to the departments. Wisner rapidly expanded the original skeletal staff, drawing upon his wartime contacts within the OSS and tapping into the ‘P source’ of Ivy Leaguers and Wall Street lawyers, attracting bright and dynamic young Americans into his new clandestine organisation.60 The fledgling agency established political warfare expertise independent of the CIA, the military or the PPS and secured its own facilities and equipment where possible, making it less reliant on external operational assistance. This immediately set it apart from rival departmental intelligence agencies that invariably depended on their parent organisations for logistical support. As the OPC became better equipped, its practical need to collaborate with the departments in the conduct of operations was exponentially reduced. A culture quickly developed, spurred on by Wisner’s infectious and dynamic leadership, characterised by an institutional loyalty to the OPC rather than to the CIA or the departments.61 William Colby recollects how Wisner cultivated ‘the atmosphere of an order of Knights Templar, to save Western freedom from Communist darkness’ in the early years of the Cold War.62 While the OPC was not meant to be a policymaking body, its initiation of operations effectively made it a de facto shaper of policy. Charles Whitehurst, an OPC operative on the Far Eastern desk, recalled: ‘Wisner would tell us to keep our mouths shut because we weren’t supposed to make policy.’ Social links became more important than formal chains of command and official policy statements in keeping the bureaucratic cogs turning. Whitehurst recalls that policy was often made ‘at a dinner party’ rather than at the conference table.63 The OPC’s semi-independence from the departments depended on its ability to freely expend secret funds. It quickly secured several sources of spending power, including access to the lucrative ERP counterpart funds. The OPC’s budget was appropriated to the Departments of Defense and State but was formally housed within the CIA to hide it from public disclosure. The Central Intelligence Agency Act or CIA Act 1949, signed into law on 20 June, confirmed

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the OPC’s budgetary independence from the government bureaucracy. Section 10 (b) granted unrivalled freedom to the DCI, and by extension to Assistant Director for Policy Coordination Wisner, to spend congressional appropriations ‘without regard to the provisions of law and regulations relating to the expenditure of Government funds; and for objects of a confidential, extraordinary, or emergency nature, such expenditures to be accounted for solely on the certificate of the Director’.64 Many CIA veterans regarded the earliest days of the Agency as ‘halcyon’ because of the benign relationship it enjoyed with Congress during that period. The Agency reported to the armed services and Appropriations Committees in the House and the Senate. This involved contact with a handful of members of Congress, whose attitude tended to be not to interfere. Therefore, securing the requested budgets was never a problem for the Agency. In 1995 Richard Helms recounted how the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, Clarence Cannon, would take hearings on the Agency’s budget proposal with two or three other representatives present: [Cannon] would end the session by pointing out very carefully to the Director that he should not go around talking to a lot of Congressmen because they leaked all the time, that he would take care of the budget and not to worry about it, and that secrecy was all important in this kind of activity.65 According to Helms, the ‘same situation existed in the Senate’.66 Once the CIA Act was passed, the DCI was imbued with full authority to expend funds. According to another CIA veteran, Deputy CIA General Counsel John Warner, it was ‘a blank check to the Director of Central Intelligence to spend it any way he sees fit’.67 Wisner did not have direct control over the OPC’s budget. Theoretically this presented an alternative means for the CIA to indirectly regulate the OPC’s activities. CIA legal counsel Larry Houston demonstrated in October 1948 that there was still the will in the Agency to contest the usurpation of its control of the OPC by the departments, but Hillenkoetter never attempted to contest the

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August 1948 ‘understanding’ by flexing the CIA’s budgetary muscle.68 As Walter Pforzheimer later recounted, ‘if he [Hillenkoetter] interfered, there would have been a call from the State Department’.69 The OPC therefore enjoyed almost unlimited spending power, as Greenway recalled: ‘We couldn’t spend it all. I remember once meeting with Wisner and the comptroller. My God, I said, how can we spend that? There were no limits and nobody had to account for it. It was amazing.’70 The OPC’s internal bureaucracy was not conducive to the strategic development of operations. Within the OPC fragmented compartments evolved, as was the case in the departments. The OPC headquarters based in Washington, DC, was responsible for initiating projects and for ensuring coordination and consistency with official departmental policy. The OPC headquarters was organised into four functional staffs dealing with political, psychological, paramilitary and economic warfare programmes, respectively. Six geographic divisions were supposed to receive administrative support from the functional staffs. But this system soon generated considerable friction between the functional staffs, the geographic divisions and the field stations who became ‘competitors’ rather than ‘joint participants’ in a coordinated effort.71 According to an internal study conducted in November 1950, ‘the present organization makes for duplication of effort and an extensive amount of unnecessary coordination and competition rather than cooperation and teamwork’. From the beginning, the OPC’s leadership was unable to effectively manage and coordinate operations within its own headquarters, let alone coordinate departmental policy with the OPC’s field operations.72 The coordination of policy and operations faced an additional institutional hurdle. While the OPC’s headquarters was responsible for initiating and planning projects, the various field stations were charged with implementing them through field task forces. The OPC rapidly expanded even prior to the outbreak of the Korean War, with a growth in the number of field stations to 47 by June 1950.73 This swift expansion soon overtook the precarious management system overseen by Wisner and his senior staff, undercutting their ability, in

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the words of one intelligence historian, to ‘keep up with the amoeba like dividing and proliferation of subelements which occurred’.74 According to Church Committee historian Anna Karalekas, as the field stations grew in number and size they increasingly asserted their own initiative in planning operations rather than formally receiving and implementing projects from Washington.75 The breakdown in centralised project development within the OPC displaced departmental policy from the OPC’s field operations and further impaired the overall strategic employment of political warfare. The frantic environment that belied the OPC was not entirely inadvertent. A dynamic (if disorganised) culture within the OPC was nurtured by Wisner, who was naturally action-oriented (in sharp contrast to the cautious Hillenkoetter). A reinvigorated sense of urgency also pervaded the OPC and the wider administration following the successful Soviet test explosion of an atomic bomb in August 1949.76 Wisner’s crusading zeal and visceral anti-communist convictions filtered throughout the organisation. Instead of viewing operations as supportive of departmental policy, a more assertive, project-oriented approach emerged whereby the operation rather than the policy it was supporting became the end result for OPC officials. Action rather than caution was also incentivised by a rewards system. Commendation and promotion was more likely when an operator threw caution to the wind and implemented operational plans.77 As a result, projects tended to expand exponentially, as William Corson observes: [. . .] each of the various streams of covert activities – psychological warfare, political warfare, economic warfare, and preventative direct action – had a way of broadening out, and a single ‘project,’ not really thought through in terms of risks, ends, purposes, and consequences, became the precedent and justification for a trickle of similar ones. From them a torrent emerged, engulfing intelligence operators [. . .]78 In the OPC’s first years there seemed little to lose and much to gain by pursuing operations. Its vibrant staff of youthful Cold Warriors enthusiastically planned and implemented operations against the

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Soviet bloc for personal, professional and ideological reasons. This fostered a disorganised scatter-gun approach to operations rather than a tightly knit programme, preventing the departments from retaining a firm grip and fostering the uncoordinated pursuit of disparate methods and objectives.

The launch of operations by the OPC Due to the secretive nature of the activities the OPC engaged in, it remains problematic to this day to perform a comprehensive review of the political warfare operations conducted against the Soviet bloc from late 1948 onwards. These missions were extremely sensitive and were conducted amid high security. Frustratingly, over 60 years later a considerable amount of information related to the OPC’s political warfare campaign remains classified in US archives. Furthermore, there are substantial gaps in the evidence available on OPC operations, quite simply because such details were never recorded in written form. Unlike policy papers and strategic decisions that are subject to processing and development within government bureaucracies, recounting the physical execution of missions is almost totally reliant on the more haphazard source of eye-witness testimonies.79 Despite these shortcomings, sufficient evidence exists in the public domain to provide an adequate historical record of the OPC’s missions against the Soviet bloc in the early Cold War, although it is hoped that more evidence becomes available in the future to allow a fuller picture. From 1949 onwards, we know that the US launched operations against Albania, Yugoslavia, Poland, Ukraine, Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Soviet Moldavia and the Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. These secret activities varied widely in terms of tactics and objectives. Some were conducted as intelligence and reconnaissance missions to gather valuable information on Soviet military levels and capabilities. Other operations were coordinated with strategic war planning at the Pentagon. The OPC inserted small teams of agents to establish sleeper cells and stay-behind networks behind enemy lines that could be activated in the event of war: this was deemed

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an important role as many believed that such a conflict was imminent.80 The OPC was therefore required by the military to set up evacuation routes for downed US pilots and resistance leaders, provide intelligence on enemy troop strengths and movements, develop the capability to conduct harassment and sabotage operations against specific enemy targets and be ready to retard the enemy advance in the event of war breaking out between the US and the Soviet Union.81 More is known about the OPC operations in Albania, Yugoslavia, Poland and Ukraine in the early Cold War. An overview of the campaigns in these countries follows. These operations all had one thing in common: they all went well beyond the limited aims of the State Department’s purported peacetime policies to pursue the peaceful retraction of Soviet power through such tactics as the promotion of Titoism. They also crossed the line for wartime preparatory planning as required by the US Department of Defense by engaging in offensive operations in peacetime – albeit in the Cold War. In fact, Washington explicitly sanctioned at least one campaign to topple a ruling communist regime behind the iron curtain, despite the provocative nature of such efforts from Moscow’s perspective. Albania: Operation Valuable/BGFIEND The most notorious operation in the Soviet bloc was the joint Secret Intelligence Service (SIS)–OPC campaign to overthrow Enver Hoxha’s communist government in Albania.82 In November 1948 the British Russia Committee identified Albania as the ‘first target’ of an offensive liberation programme.83 Albania was deemed an appropriate test because, following Tito’s split with Stalin in mid-1948, it was geographically isolated from the rest of the Soviet bloc. Western officials felt it might be susceptible to a political warfare campaign because it was a small country and the weakest member of the communist bloc. Despite its geopolitical insignificance, there were also positive strategic reasons for overthrowing the communist regime in Albania and separating it from Moscow. For example, Hoxha continued to support the long-running Greek communist insurgency. Furthermore, intelligence reports indicated that the Soviets were planning to build

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a submarine base at Velona Bay that would provide them with direct access to the vital sea lanes in the Mediterranean.84 The British SIS planned to train teams of Albanian agents and then infiltrate inside the country to stir up a partisan resistance movement, with the ultimate aim being to topple Hoxha’s communist regime. But a lack of available resources quickly forced the British to turn to Washington to come in on the Albanian venture. A British delegation was led by the SIS’s William Hayter to meet with State Department and OPC officials in Washington. The British were warmly received, with Wisner and Joyce enthusiastically endorsing the project. Wisner identified the Albanian operation, codenamed Valuable by the British and BGFIEND by the Americans, as ‘a clinical experiment to see whether larger roll-back operations would be feasible elsewhere’ within the Soviet bloc without provoking war with Moscow.85 A Special Policy Committee (SPC) was promptly set up in Washington to exercise broad operational control over Operation Valuable/BGFIEND. The SPC consisted of representatives of the various interested parties – Robert Joyce from the State Department, Frank Lindsay from the OPC, Earl Jellicoe of the British Embassy and Kim Philby, the Soviet mole who was the SIS representative in Washington. The organisation and character of the Albanian operation was therefore distinct from other offensive activities conducted by the OPC. It was conducted with the unequivocal blessing of senior administrative officials in Washington (as well as London). Secretary of State Acheson gave the green light to the project after a meeting with his British counterpart Ernest Bevin in September 1949.86 As a result of this high-level endorsement, Operation BGFIEND had an integrated chain of command, forming a ‘bridge between the State Department and intelligence operations’. This set-up was a considerable departure from the more disorderly departmental exercise of authority over the OPC’s numerous other offensive campaigns.87 Tighter operational planning and control was certainly desirable. The project also benefited from the identification by the Anglo– American team of specific aims and methods towards Albania. As a result, they could organise requisite capabilities to

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meet operational goals. Instead of wavering between ‘liberation’ and ‘evolution’, the endgame was unambiguously to overthrow Hoxha. From 1949, teams of Albanian ‘pixies’ were trained in paramilitary techniques in Malta by the British and in West Germany by the Americans. These agents were to infiltrate Albania by sea, over land and later from the air to rally an indigenous resistance movement that, once sufficiently powerful, would move against the ruling communist authorities. Nevertheless, the project threw up numerous problems at the policy and operational levels. First, Acheson’s endorsement of Operation BGFIEND actually contradicted official State Department policy. Here was an explicit endorsement of ‘liberation’ at the operational level, even though policymakers continued to refuse to commit to such a strategy within government directives, instead propounding alternatives including Titoism and other less provocative gradualist approaches. When given a clear and seemingly viable proposition to liberate a communist country, Acheson demonstrated that the Truman administration would in fact endorse such a policy at the highest level. Acheson’s impulsive decision overrode the State Department’s non-committal stance on its support for revolution – and flew in the face of his adviser’s opinion.88 The day before Acheson met Bevin to confirm American support for Operation Valuable, the Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs George Perkins sent him a memorandum warning Acheson to be careful not to commit to ‘any premature opening up of this question’ that the British might encourage. According to Perkins, the ramifications of an Albanian offensive ‘are by no means clear’ and could easily upset the delicate regional situation.89 Of most concern was the impact that an offensive Albanian campaign might have on Tito’s retention of power in Yugoslavia, as it could provide a Soviet pretext for military intervention there. It could potentially also reignite the Greek civil war that was dying down by 1949.90 Furthermore, the Albanian project would supplant ongoing State Department debates over whether or not to accept recent moves by the Hoxha regime to improve relations between the two countries.91

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Although there were some constructive features to the way the Americans planned the Albanian project, the campaign that began in earnest in October 1949 ended in abject failure five years later. It proved impossible for the West to incite an effective resistance movement against Hoxha, primarily because the campaign was based upon a misguided strategic premise. As Rositzke observes, even a ‘weak regime’ like Cold War Albania could not be detached from the Soviet orbit ‘by covert paramilitary actions alone’.92 The historian Michael Dravis agrees with this conclusion, noting that wartime unconventional operations were useful against Nazi Germany as ‘natural corollaries to a larger military strategy’. In contrast to the successful wartime experience, the ‘Anglo– American plan for Albania was flawed because covert paramilitary operations are rarely a viable substitute for conventional military action’.93 Two contemporary CIA reports produced in September and December 1949 had warned of the potential for failure very early into the campaign. According to the pessimistic judgement of Agency analysts, there was little chance of successfully fomenting indigenous resistance movements capable of toppling Hoxha.94 This totally contrasted with the prevalent mood in the OPC at the time. James McCargar, the American commander of the Albanian operation until April 1950, recollected the feeling that ‘we had only to shake the trees and the ripe plums would fall’.95 The CIA’s more realistic assessment was borne out by events. Despite Albania’s weakness and the relatively large Anglo–American mobilisation of anti-communist forces against Hoxha, the Anglo–American insertions were utterly ineffective against the Albanian regime’s ruthless security forces. The Western-trained guerrillas were completely undermined both by Kim Philby’s treachery, and more importantly by the porous Albanian e´migre´ communities that were extremely susceptible to Soviet intelligence penetration.96 Richard Helms, from his Office of Special Operations vantage point, recognised ‘some of these operations OPC was taking on as being overly ambitious, too big to be really secure’ and therefore ‘natural targets for penetration’.97 Many Albanian agents were ambushed by Hoxha’s secret police, the Sigurimi, and captured or killed as soon as they entered Albanian territory. The luckiest escaped by fleeing overland to Greece.

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Although Wisner initially brandished Operation Valuable/ BGFIEND a test case for the viability of liberation, operations were allowed to drag on despite the record of dismal failure. As late as November 1952, American strategists were clinging to the hope that because of Albania’s unique geographical position, ‘its detachment from the Soviet orbit may be feasible’. A report issued by Truman’s Psychological Strategy Board (PSB) persevered with the point that the demise of communism in Albania ‘would be a demonstration that a continuing Soviet advance is not inevitable and that a retraction of Soviet power is practically possible’.98 In fact, the OPC’s continuous failure to detach Albania from the Soviet bloc should have revealed that the opposite was true – that it was not practically possible to roll back communist power through isolated covert political warfare operations, even in what was deemed to be the weakest of all the Soviet bloc states. By mid-1954 the State Department recommended that the Albanian campaign should be put on hold. This recommendation did not stem from the repeated failure of the project to weaken Hoxha’s grip on power and from recognition that the prototype rollback operation had failed its ‘test’. Instead, American diplomats were concerned that the Albanian mission would undermine ongoing negotiations between the Balkan countries over the status of Trieste.99 But the truth was that the clinical test of liberation through political warfare in Albania had already proven abortive. Finally, Tirana publicly announced to the world on New Year’s Eve 1953 that an American agent had been successfully turned by the Sigurimi two years earlier and that an elaborate deception operation had been put into operation by the Albanian security services ever since. Several American-trained e´migre´ rebels who had been lured into Albania to join the double agent had been captured, put on trial and duly executed by the Albanian state in April 1954.100 The failure of the Americans to cut their losses sooner has astounded historians ever since. Robin Winks observes: ‘Seldom has an intelligence operation proceeded so resolutely from one disaster to another.’101 Bethell describes the ‘bizarre decision’ taken by the US to persist even once the British pulled out in the early 1950s

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and morale amongst the Albanian e´migre´ communities had plummeted. It can perhaps be partly explained by the frenzied anti-communist atmosphere that was gripping the US in the run-up to the US presidential election and the public popularity of the Republican platform to liberate Eastern Europe from Soviet domination.102 The West’s inability to overthrow the Hoxha regime also papered over the cracks of the inadequacies of longer-term politico-strategic planning. The thorny question of who should replace Hoxha in the event of his overthrow proved extremely difficult to resolve. The Americans and the British had divergent views on whether to support Albanian republicans or the deposed monarch. Of more importance were the divisive relationships between the various exile Albanian communities.103 A covert, but nonetheless problematic, link was made between the field operations and an Albanian political face. The Albanian National Committee under the leadership of Mithat Frashe¨ri was established under the auspices of the National Committee for a Free Europe. This group was intended to provide the basis of an Albanian government-in-exile while the covert political warfare operations were under way to oust Hoxha’s regime. Unfortunately for the British and Americans, deep rifts between the Albanian exile communities undermined any chance of developing a united political front to complement the covert paramilitary programme being undertaken. Operations were therefore implemented before a satisfactory post-revolution political plan had even been reached. Yugoslavia: misadventure in the Balkans Ever since Tito’s expulsion from the Cominform in mid-1948, the State Department had attempted to mould a policy that was both specific to Yugoslavia and had broader connotations for the region. The resultant policy of fostering ‘Titoism’ was predicated on supporting the ‘heretic’ Yugoslav leader, and protecting his regime from encroachments by the Soviet Union and its satellites, in order to exploit divisions within the communist bloc. Yet the historian Beatrice Heuser suggests that Yugoslavia may in fact have been the

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OPC’s first target following the adoption of NSC 10/2. Despite the State Department’s promotion of national communism across Eastern Europe based on the Tito model, the OPC simultaneously hatched a plan to detach Yugoslavia from the Soviet bloc by bringing down Tito.104 Wisner’s office began to infiltrate right-wing monarchist exiles into Yugoslavia with a view to overthrowing Tito’s regime. In an incredibly divisive move that could only be regarded as an affront to the Yugoslav leader, the majority of those inserted were Serbian Chetniks who had fought a bitter civil war with Tito’s partisans during the recent war against Nazi Germany. Inconceivably, these exiles were dressed conspicuously in US Air Force uniforms and were immediately recognised and arrested by the security police.105 It is quite remarkable that a covert OPC campaign was launched to undermine the Yugoslav regime in 1948– 9. This utterly contradicted Washington’s official position on that country and, more damagingly, it fundamentally undercut the basis for the entire regional policy of encouraging further deviationist leaders to emerge within the communist camp. Any exposure of American perfidy against Tito could only compel greater loyalty and cohesion within the Soviet sphere and discourage national communist dissidents from seeking closer ties with the West. The OPC’s Yugoslav adventure directly conflicted with parallel overt and covert policies being implemented by the State Department, in particular the outward displays of diplomatic support and clandestine shipments of arms and economic aid to Tito’s beleaguered regime. It is an episode that demonstrates just how widely operations were able to diverge from policies within the context of the strategic vacuum and the OPC’s autonomy. Reactions in Washington and London following the exposure of the misguided operation were fittingly incredulous. In the British Foreign Office Charles Bateman described ‘this idiotic American behaviour’ as ‘inconceivably stupid’, a feeling that British Foreign Secretary Bevin sympathised with and passed on to the State Department.106 US Ambassador to Yugoslavia Cavendish Cannon first learned of the OPC operation ex post facto. He too was horrified that the OPC could engage in such an amateurish and

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counterproductive activity. In a furious cable back to Washington he reminded his superiors that the agreed policy was to seek the proliferation of the Titoist example because it was the ‘sole apparent agency for undermining Soviet influence in East Europe’. According to Cannon, the notion that Tito’s downfall would result in a more representative and Western-oriented regime constituted a ‘highly wishful approach to east European political realities’. There was, according to him, a total lack of leadership and organisation among anti-communists and non-communist groups who could possibly supplant Tito’s current regime. In contrast, the Cominform ‘is ready to exploit by force any weakening in Tito’s security apparatus. We are not ready and not likely to be.’ There were similarities to Operation Valuable/BGFIEND here. Little thought had been given to the complex issue of what is now called ‘nation building’ – to the postrevolution political situation. Cannon was emphatic, calling for an end, once and for all, to any naive notions that the US could undermine Tito and simultaneously plant democratic roots in the Balkans. ‘In Yugoslavia there are not three choices but two,’ he declared starkly: ‘Tito or a Moscow tool.’107 Poland: support of WIN Another project was launched by the OPC in the late 1940s that went well beyond the purportedly limited policies of the State Department. Wisner and his colleagues in the OPC attempted to organise and equip an anti-communist resistance movement to topple the ruling communist government in Poland. According to Rositzke, the attempt to mobilise the Polish Freedom and Independence Movement (with the Polish acronym WIN) by the Western intelligence services was the ‘most substantial and disastrous paramilitary effort inside the Soviet orbit’.108 Yet the initial signs were auspicious of potential success. The Polish campaign appeared to be better conceived than the Albanian project because an extensive anti-Soviet underground resistance movement had existed in Poland and across the Baltic and Ukraine since World War II, but the timing of the operation was not propitious. By late 1948, when the SIS and

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OPC attempted to engage with WIN, it was already severely depleted and thoroughly penetrated by Soviet intelligence.109 As with Operation Valuable, the Polish project originated with the British SIS, but by early 1949 Wisner was a keen proponent. With strong support from Colonel Robert McDowell at the JCS, the OPC took over financing the operation and the US endeavoured to equip and mobilise an indigenous resistance network over the next three years. Unfortunately for the Americans, the majority of WIN’s protagonists had been turned by the Polish communist security police, the UB, under the guidance of the Soviet Ministry of State Security, the MGB. This included WIN’s prominent leader Joseph Sienko, who had managed to ‘escape’ from Poland in 1947 and headed for London. Sienko duped the British, and in turn the Americans, by convincing the remnants of the Polish government in exile based in London that an extensive resistance movement remained in place in Poland with as many as 20,000 committed members. In 1951 doubts were raised within the OPC by Frank Lindsay and John Bross over the credibility of WIN when it requested that the US parachute in high-ranking US military officers to orchestrate the resistance movement’s training programme. Bross recollected that the idea of ‘an American general, hanging from a parachute, descending into a Communist country, gave us some pause for thought’.110 Nonetheless, these concerns over the security of WIN did not prompt a significant reassessment. The operation continued to supply agents, arms and materiel (although no American generals) into the waiting hands of the UB until it was exposed by the official Polish communist media in December 1952, much to the chagrin of Wisner and his colleagues at the OPC. Upon learning of the publication in a Polish newspaper of details of the operation, the OPC consultants – Joyce for the US State Department, John Magruder for the Department of Defense and Colonel Wright representing the JCS – hurriedly met on 30 December 1952 to discuss the ramifications of the failed campaign. They immediately recognised the diplomatic and operational implications of the exposure of this covert operation. The following day Joyce dejectedly

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wrote to his boss, Deputy Under Secretary of State Matthews, informing him that ‘this affair represents an appalling setback’ for the US government. On the diplomatic level it ‘might have serious repercussions on the operations of our Embassy in Warsaw’. In addition, operationally, the infiltration of the entire campaign meant that ‘the Polish UB has obtained information on the techniques and objectives of American clandestine activities’. Rubbing salt in the wound, Joyce also noted that the communist regime in Warsaw ‘has made extremely clever and probably most effective propaganda use out of this fiasco’.111 In considering these events, Chapter 5 describes how the total and humiliating failure of the WIN project finally persuaded Joyce and his PPS colleagues that the strategy underpinning the OPC’s political warfare programme was inherently flawed. It led Joyce, in light of the spectacular failure of the Polish operation, to call for a policy-level overhaul of the entire political warfare endeavour. ‘The entire subject of cold war activities by clandestine means directed against the Soviet orbit in Eastern Europe,’ Joyce urged, ‘should be studied by the Psychological Strategy Board or whatever top level agency might succeed it under the new Administration.’112 This was a crushing defeat for the Truman administration at the end of its four-year campaign to roll back the Soviet bloc, just as Eisenhower and his new team were waiting in the wings to take over the executive reins of government. Ukraine: Operation ZRELOPE The OPC also perceived favourable prospects for the anti-Soviet resistance movement in Ukraine in the early Cold War. Between 1945 and 1950 over 30,000 Soviet military and communist party officials were assassinated by Ukrainian nationalist guerrillas in Stephan Bandera’s extreme right-wing Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists and its militia the Ukrainian Insurgent Army. One key reason behind its effectiveness was that the Ukrainian guerrilla force generally managed to resist extensive penetration by the Soviet security services.113

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Spurred on by these local successes in the field, the OPC began to recruit Ukrainian exiles scattered throughout the displaced person camps across Europe. The displaced person camps were a valuable source of recruitment for the OPC, not only in operations against Ukraine but towards the entire Eastern bloc. Wisner had understood the significance of the teeming displaced person camps ever since he had first come into contact with them soon after his appointment as Charles Saltzman’s Deputy Assistant Secretary for Occupied Areas within the State Department in 1947. He and Lindsay later recruited men such as William Sloane Coffin, Michael Burke and Carmel Offie into the OPC and these officials scoured the displaced person camps for young exiled anti-communists of all nationalities.114 The OPC veteran Harry Rositzke recollects how ‘hundreds of courageous men [. . .] preferred to fight the Russians or the communists rather than linger in displaced person camps or emigrate to Brazil. Scores of agents paid with their lives for our concern.’115 Another OPC officer, William Sloane Coffin, recalled that: ‘It was all tragic, all lost. But it was war. You buried your buddies and kept fighting.’116 Many of the e´migre´s recruited by the OPC were organised into national committees under the NCFE, where they could be systematically trained and deployed for various political warfare roles against the Eastern bloc. Unfortunately for the American recruiters, the displaced person camps were also fertile grounds for the Soviet secret services, and many of those who swelled the OPC’s ranks had already been turned into double agents against the West. Young male e´migre´s of various political backgrounds, including many with chequered wartime collaborationist records with the Nazis, were trained to undertake intelligence-gathering missions and to join up with the resistance movement in the Carpathian Mountains under a programme codenamed Operation ZRELOPE.117 Rositzke recalled: ‘It was a visceral business of using any bastard as long as he was anti-Communist [. . . and] the eagerness or desire to enlist collaborators meant that sure, you didn’t look at their credentials too closely.’ The British were fairly fatalistic about the prospects of the Organisation of Ukranian Nationalists ever being any more than a ‘nuisance’ to the Soviets.118 But the OPC saw other

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uses for the Ukrainian resistance movement, particularly as tensions with Russia escalated following the Berlin crisis and the outbreak of the Korean War. As the perception grew that war with Moscow was imminent, the Pentagon in particular placed high importance on developing ‘an early warning system, to tip us off if there were indications of mobilization in the area’.119 Faced by what it feared was an impending Soviet invasion of Western Europe, the military was therefore prepared to be fairly cynical in its use of the Ukrainian resistance movement. According to Rositzke, it was clear to the OPC planners by 1950 that ‘the resistance potential in the Ukraine as a behind-the-lines counter to a Soviet military action against Western Europe [. . .] could play no serious paramilitary role’.120 The OPC continued to insert agents and airdrop medical supplies, cash and radio transmitting equipment into the Ukraine from the late 1940s onwards.121 These efforts were once again futile. As one veteran of the OPC campaign in the region, Tom Polgar, sardonically recounted, the ‘only thing’ proved by these activities was ‘the law of gravity’. By 1953 the strategic infeasibility of resistance movements being able to successfully defeat the Red Army and Soviet security services was borne out. As with all the other attempts by the OPC to mobilise an underground guerrilla force against communist regimes, the operation eventually collapsed when the Ukrainian nationalists were worn down by the Soviet security police. The only positive development to come out of the Ukrainian campaign, according to another OPC veteran David Murphy, was that ‘on the other hand, we learned how not to do it’.122 ***** The tragic irony of the political warfare campaign waged by the US and its allies against the communist states of the Soviet bloc is that Washington actually contributed to the downfall of the resistance groups that it hoped to support inside Eastern Europe, by the very nature of its limited commitment to them. The US resort to political warfare against the Eastern bloc was on the one hand too limited and small-scale to achieve results. There was never a concomitant military

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commitment to achieve liberation. On the other hand, these activities were sufficiently conspicuous and threatening that they aroused the concerted interest of the Soviet and local communist secret police services. According to Jeffrey Burds, this produced a ‘powerful blowback effect’.123 In Ukraine and throughout the region, Western subversive activities stimulated an extensive restructuring of the Soviet secret police system and increasing reliance on repressive measures to counteract the rise of nationalism and anti-communism. But it was not until late 1956, when Soviet troops crushed the Hungarian Revolution, that the US government finally accepted that limited American political warfare operations were no match against such a formidable and ruthless adversary.

CHAPTER 5 DISORDER OVER DESIGN: THE STRATEGIC AND OPERATIONAL IMPASSE OVER US POLITICAL WARFARE, 1950—3

In one sense the year 1950 marked a turning point for the Office of Policy Coordination’s campaign against the Soviet bloc. The start of the Korean War in June 1950 had a major impact on political warfare operations undertaken by the United States (US). It set in motion a dramatic expansion and intensification of US subversive operations both in Asia in support of the war effort against the North Korean communists (and soon the Chinese), and also in Europe. In the US fears were rife that Pyongyang’s invasion of the South was a preliminary step directed by Moscow in an all-out war against the West. As war panic swept through Washington, the widely held presumption was that Berlin and West Germany could be the next target of attack by communist military forces. Even as the fears of an impending wider war receded, the feeling lingered that the US must step up its attempts to undermine Soviet power in Europe, now that the Cold War was spreading from the ‘core’ European theatre to the strategic ‘periphery’ of the developing world. Therefore, the Korean War did not diminish calls for political warfare against the Soviet bloc, it actually intensified them. Under the seminal policy paper NSC 68 this augmentation was officially

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mandated and financially accounted for by Truman. In particular the US military, now involved in a conventional military conflict in Korea, turned to the OPC and placed heavy demands on it to undertake preparatory quasi-military operations in Europe in anticipation of the wider war that was expected to follow the fighting in Asia. The military chiefs urged the OPC to make contact with underground resistance groups behind the iron curtain and to establish sleeper cells that could be activated to undertake sabotage, retardation, espionage and rescue missions in support of the Western military campaign and to hinder the advance of Soviet bloc military forces by attacking behind enemy lines once war in Europe broke out.1 Although the OPC’s budget, operations and capabilities mushroomed during the Korean War years, the strategy behind its Soviet bloc activities was still unclear. The covert political warfare campaign against the East continued to be undermined by the same fundamental strategic flaws after 1950, despite more money being thrown at the venture. European Cold War divisions were intractably frozen by the time the Korean War broke out in mid-1950. Soviet dominance of the satellite nations was firmly established and intimately linked to Moscow’s vital national security interests. Moreover, the communist regimes in Eastern Europe possessed extremely effective police-state organs of power. This nullified any foreseeable opportunity for the ‘reduction’ or ‘retraction’ of Soviet-communist power and influence from Eastern Europe through US political warfare activities, as had been called for in NSC 20/4 and other national directives. In reality, by 1950 it was completely inconceivable that Moscow’s control over the Soviet bloc could be overturned by any means other than a full-scale military campaign. This scenario was not a serious policy option for US strategists in the nuclear age. The US government continued to aspire to liberate Eastern Europe from Soviet-communist domination during the 1950s, and the programme of limited ‘covert’ operations remained the principal means of achieving this. But it was an utterly unrealistic and unfeasible undertaking. In the final three years of the Truman government, policy papers increasingly acknowledged this unwelcome reality but there remained a tendency to temper pessimistic

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forecasts with the hope that future opportunities to influence the retraction of communist power in the Soviet bloc would arise. For instance, in August 1951 the NSC observed that ‘stresses and strains have developed in the European satellites’. But it was also noted that there were still ‘no indications that the difficulties are sufficiently serious to jeopardize the Communist regimes’ or to ‘reduce the firm grip of Soviet control over these regimes’.2 It was increasingly recognised in this period that the detachment of a Soviet satellite through measures short of war (in other words political warfare) was extremely unlikely, but this did not amount to recognition of the futility of the OPC’s covert political warfare programme against the Soviet bloc or the termination of these activities. When examining this period it is striking that this fundamental strategic flaw at the heart of the OPC programme was allowed to persist for so long. US policymakers failed to address the strategic issue head on by linking limited political warfare capabilities to the formidable objective of liberating a powerful bloc of adversarial regimes. Although American covert action operations against the Soviet bloc were based on the flawed strategic premise that results could be achieved by peaceful means, modifications to the American approach were discussed in detail in the period 1950–3. However, these reviews did not tend to scrutinise Soviet bloc strategy and policy. Instead the key focus was on the machinery and management of political warfare. This was partly because strategic difficulties had become interwoven with the longstanding problem present since the earliest days of Central Intelligence Group (CIG) of organisational dysfunction. Systemic improvements had previously been needed to ameliorate the internecine feuding between the Central Intelligence Agency and Policy Planning Staff, in particular in the troubled period when NSC 10/2 was being drafted. In 1950 a new Director of Central Intelligence, General Walter Bedell Smith, took charge of the Agency. Smith’s CIA found that its need for an improved system of policy guidance from the Departments of State and Defense was even more pressing now that demands on the OPC were burgeoning as the Cold War intensified during the Korean War. But although Smith raised serious concerns

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over the OPC’s Soviet bloc activities, his priority was to address the organisational questions that impaired the CIA, rather than to resolve broader (and ultimately far more significant) issues in relation to US Soviet bloc strategy. Smith’s actions were naturally based on protecting his organisation. Although there was overlap between organisational and strategic issues, due to the pressures of the Cold War this did not result in a fundamental reconceptualisation of the political warfare programme. Although action was taken to address Smith’s concerns over the administration and capabilities of the OPC/CIA, no amount of organisational restructuring could resolve the basic strategic contradictions in the US approach that remained outstanding – that a limited covert political warfare programme aimed at retracting Soviet power in Eastern Europe was simply unfeasible in the early 1950s.

The directorship of Walter Bedell Smith In part the effort under Smith to improve organisational structures and practices was intended to deal with the loose approach to political warfare that had developed in the late 1940s. Smith’s first act, at the urging of CIA General Counsel Larry Houston, was to challenge the Agency’s deference to the Departments of State and Defense over ‘policy control’ of the OPC.3 Upon taking charge of the CIA, Smith immediately reversed Hillenkoetter’s submission to the departments. At a meeting with the departmental liaison officials held on 11 October 1950, Smith reasserted the CIA’s authority over Wisner’s group as set out in NSC 10/2, bringing the OPC back under the DCI’s centralised control. His repudiation of the August 1948 ‘understanding’, from which the OPC had derived a considerable amount of autonomy, was ‘well-received’ by the departmental representatives to the OPC (Joyce at the Department of State, Magruder at Defense and Admiral Leslie Stevens for the Joint Chiefs of Staff).4 Smith then consolidated his gains by informing (rather than requesting concurrence from) the Intelligence Advisory Committee on 20 October that the OPC’s leadership ‘would act under the authority and subject to the control of the Director of

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Central Intelligence, who, under NSC 10/2, was responsible for Mr. Wisner’s operations’.5 The past struggle to control political warfare had been fought between Kennan and Hillenkoetter but, because both men had moved on in their respective careers, a bureaucratic conflict was avoided this time. Smith’s rank and force of personality also helped to ensure that his demands were accepted. And Smith soothed any remaining concerns by expressing his respect for the departments’ prerogative to feed policy guidance directly to Wisner through the liaison channels. Although these measures were justifiable improvements to the political warfare machinery, no amount of organisational tinkering could cope with the broader problem. American strategy remained incoherent, with peacetime tactical plans oscillating between the pursuit of violent revolution and gradualist evolution within the communist bloc. There remained the need to design a viable and cogent set of methods and objectives on a national basis towards the Soviet bloc. The OPC was still in some important respects unregulated, although it was now under the firm and watchful control of DCI Smith. Wisner’s outfit continued to enjoy a large amount of operational autonomy, free from an overarching strategic framework that would invariably have placed stricter limitations on the programme. The strategic vacuum inevitably resulted in a lack of consistency in American activities and policies towards the Soviet bloc.

The impact of NSC 68 on strategy and operations The strategic basis for the ‘liberation’ of the Soviet bloc was not clarified, despite the production of a foreign policy ‘blueprint’ in 1950. NSC 68 demanded the expansion of the political warfare offensive against Moscow and its allies, but it did not resolve the strategic feasibility of those operations. Instead the vague goals of NSC 20/4 were simply reaffirmed.6 An intensified political warfare campaign would aim ‘to check and roll back the Kremlin’s drive for world domination’. NSC 68 advocated a costly increase in American conventional and nuclear military capabilities. This in turn would

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provide an ‘adequate military shield’ under which Western strength could be enhanced and ‘a vigorous political offensive against the Soviet Union’ could be launched. The US should ‘take dynamic steps to reduce the power and influence of the Kremlin inside the Soviet Union and other areas under its control’ while the development of a preponderant military capacity would act as a deterrent against Soviet reprisals. According to the policy paper, the effort should consist of an expansion of ‘affirmative and timely measures and operations by covert means in the fields of economic warfare and political and psychological warfare with a view to fomenting and supporting unrest and revolt in selected strategic satellite countries’.7 The offensive character of this policy was confirmed when Truman staff assistant Charles Murphy asked for clarification at a NSC meeting in September 1950 that this meant that ‘we should intensify our efforts to look for ways to wrest the initiative from the Soviets and to roll them back’. Secretary of State Acheson replied that this was ‘very important and quite right’.8 NSC 68 therefore allocated more resources to the departments and agencies engaged in political warfare. Much of the restructuring of the political warfare apparatus after 1950 actually originated in the organisational strains brought on by the expansion of the covert programme sanctioned under NSC 68, although the directive did not itself address underlying bureaucratic divisions that existed between government departments and agencies.9 Yet the basic problem was not these deep-seated institutional divisions, but the lack of a coherent unifying strategic concept. The allocation of greater resources to the bureaucracy under NSC 68 and the restructuring after its approval did not settle how to define the parameters and character of the ‘political offensive’ against Moscow in order to make the operation viable. The approach taken after the adoption of NSC 68 made a bad situation worse, widening the gap between strategic capabilities and objectives. Recent scholarship has implied that political warfare was central to NSC 68 and by extension to US national security strategy. According to this view, the Truman administration authorised a military build-up to enable the US to intensify its clandestine

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campaign to roll back Soviet power in Europe.10 While NSC 68 did open up the space for the expansion of political warfare operations and justified this by determining that Soviet reprisals would be deterred through the build-up of preponderant American power, the lack of consideration given to political warfare strategy is compelling. Senior Truman administration officials never paid meaningful attention to designing a strategy for the liberation campaign – and this undermines the notion that political warfare was a central part of mainstream US foreign policy. The paucity of attention paid to Soviet bloc policy stands in complete contrast to the detailed consideration of Western European political and military policy at the highest levels in Washington and coordinated between the departments through the State-Defense Policy Review Group. Political warfare was always hampered because it was an enclave strategy in the Truman administration. PPS Director Paul Nitze, the chief drafter of NSC 68, did not share Kennan’s views on the strategic employment of political warfare within a unified European policy framework. In keeping with the attitudes of his superiors Acheson, Marshall and Truman, for Nitze the ‘first concern’ was protecting the security of Western Europe where America’s NATO allies ‘were in serious need of reassurance that the balance of power was not tipping in favour of the Soviet Union’. This would be achieved by developing ‘positions of strength’ in the West by building up conventional military forces as well as a nuclear deterrent, rather than through concentrating efforts on a subversive campaign to undermine the Soviet Union itself.11 From this perspective US counterforce was seen as a valuable component, but not as a means of liberating the satellite regimes per se. Instead, political warfare could be employed to destabilise the Soviet system in order to stave off the imminent Soviet assault on the ‘free world’ that was inherent in NSC 68’s message that Moscow craved global domination. As time went on Nitze developed a ‘hierarchy of national security objectives’. He supported the intensification of political warfare against the Soviet Union when faced with the determined opposition of Russian specialist Charles Bohlen during 1951– 2. Nitze argued that ‘as the free world’s

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capabilities are developed, opportunities will arise for inducing or compelling a retraction of Soviet power, not, of course, without any risks but at acceptable risks’.12 In contrast to Kennan’s concept that it should be an integral component of US Cold War strategy, Nitze believed that the political warfare offensive should only be pursued once a preponderant level of military power had been achieved. Kennan’s loss of influence during the drafting process of NSC 68 added to the neglect of a political warfare strategy. According to Scott Lucas, ‘Kennan’s voice was scarcely heard as Nitze dominated the meetings of the State-Defense Policy Review Group’.13 Nitze confirmed that the drafting of NSC 68 ‘fell almost entirely’ on himself, John Davies, Bob Tufts and Robert Hooker at the PPS.14 Kennan therefore felt the ‘bludgeon’ of the new approach more sensitively than most in the government.15 His diminishing influence and the lack of other strategists to pick up his baton meant that a unifying strategic concept was not provided within the pages of NSC 68 or elsewhere. The notion of an offensive to retract Soviet-directed communism was peripheral, in contrast to the determination to bolster the material and psychological strength of the ‘free world’. Senior policymakers in the post-war period allowed the conceptualisation of an American strategy for Eastern Europe to ride the coat-tails of its Western European policy. The vague notion prevailed that by first developing a position of strength in Western Europe, the Soviet bloc would somehow transform itself along Western lines. This was related to Kennan’s principle of attracting Eastern Europe into the Western fold by creating a wealthy and politically stable Western bloc. Kennan had belatedly sought ways of unifying policy to strengthen Western Europe in combination with diplomatic efforts to retract Soviet power from Central and Eastern Europe under Program A. But in practical terms American officials dealing with Eastern European policy were left adrift by Washington’s overwhelming emphasis on Western Europe from 1947 onwards. There was, of course, an ideological commitment and aspiration at the highest levels of the government to implement the American

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interpretation of the Yalta ‘Declaration of Liberated Europe’ in Eastern Europe. But men of influence such as Truman, Marshall, Lovett, Acheson, Nitze and Forrestal did not move beyond aspiration to develop a realistic strategy specifically designed to reshape the political fate of Eastern Europe while the international situation remained flexible. Once Europe had divided into hostile Cold War camps the only realistic (but unthinkable) option left for American planners to liberate the Soviet bloc was to resort to a full-scale military campaign to drive out the Soviet garrisons and communist rulers. US policy was instead focused on Western Europe’s political future. This policy was disconnected from any efforts to deal with Eastern Europe, particularly from 1948– 9 as plans to partition Germany and formalise a military alliance with Western Europe gathered pace. The paradox of this was that as America successfully advanced towards achieving its goals in Western Europe, the chances of securing its aspirations in the East receded. Ironically, the relative clarity of Washington’s Western European policy from 1947 onwards actually compounded the development of a coherent unified European strategy as relations between Russia and America soured. Stalinist Russia felt gravely threatened by the implementation of the Marshall Plan, the establishment of an independent West Germany and the creation of NATO. From late 1948, Moscow’s national security was therefore irrevocably linked to the maintenance of a hegemonic but nonetheless defensive position in Eastern Europe. The lack of a unified European strategy by no means placed Eastern Europe out of bounds for US covert operations. As has been noted in previous chapters, the Truman administration approached in some depth the issue of undermining the Soviet bloc during 1949 in particular. But these discussions quickly exposed a lack of workable alternatives to the OPC programme. Political warfare was essentially regarded as a lesser evil. It was preferable to the alternatives – negotiations that recognised Soviet dominance, and military action that would almost certainly spark the outbreak of a Third World War – even though this limited methodology did not resolve how it would be possible to roll back Soviet power in the East.

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On the one hand, for domestic political reasons, political warfare operations were preferable to passivity. Domestic political and public pressure during this acute period of the Cold War dictated that the US government must do something. Although Washington attempted to shroud the OPC’s activities in secrecy, the overall political warfare programme was a visible venture. Washington mobilised thousands of Eastern European exiles and domestic e´migre´ communities within the US as a moral challenge to Soviet rule, although the government attempted to blur its direct links through its orchestration of ‘stateprivate’ networks and front organisations.16 This also provided an outlet for Cold Warriors to exercise their anti-communist fervour. On the other hand, Washington ran with political warfare rather than risk a hot war – because of all the terrible connotations evoked by the prospect of a fullscale conflict with Russia. Ultimately the military option held little prospect of unifying Europe on any worthwhile terms, given the emerging scenario of mutually assured destruction in the atomic age. By 1949 political warfare had reached its limits in practical geopolitical terms. There was very little that could be done by the US to influence the political composition of the Soviet bloc without some sort of a strategic resolution. If the ‘liberation’ of Eastern Europe through isolated political warfare operations was unfeasible, then this raised the question of what the viable alternatives were beyond military conflict and passivity on the tactical level. Diplomacy was the only remaining realistic alternative – and in the long run political negotiations proved to be the most effective medium for thawing relations between East and West during the Cold War. Numerous attempts were made in the post-war period to reach a political settlement over Eastern and Central Europe, particularly through the the Council of Foreign Ministers forum. Although such efforts proved extremely divisive, prior to the Cold War freeze of 1948– 9, a negotiated resolution over Eastern Europe was the most realistic option by which Washington might possibly have reached a modus vivendi with Moscow. This did not necessarily demand that diplomacy would have to be separated from political warfare. Indeed a combination of methods was exactly what Kennan called for in 1948– 9, although at this stage the Truman administration’s

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prioritisation of Western European policy had undermined its viability. Even after Europe divided along Cold War lines, diplomacy still offered a way to partially achieve American aspirations, while opening up a space for political warfare to play a valuable role in inducing further gains. In the late 1940s Washington was in an optimal position to secure favourable terms from Moscow over the political neutralisation of Central Europe (Germany and Austria). In 1947 the US had not held a sufficient position of strength to exploit a political settlement to its maximum advantage. Because of this American planners had expected to be rebuffed over the European Recovery Program by the Eastern European regimes. So it was that in 1947 Washington’s limited capabilities meant that it was unable to parlay out of the Marshall Plan the opening up of Eastern Europe. By 1949 a firm position of strength had been successfully established in Western Europe through implementation of the Marshall Plan, the favourable Italian election results and the drawing down of the Greek civil war. In contrast, the Soviet position in Central Europe was at its lowest ebb following Stalin’s ill-conceived blockade of Berlin. Moscow’s sense of acute vulnerability, stemming particularly from the impending creation of an independent and prospectively powerful West German state, created a unique window of opportunity making it temporarily amenable to a face-saving settlement to unify and neutralise Germany. Despite American ‘successes’ in Western Europe, broader Soviet bloc objectives in NSC 20/4 had not been accomplished by 1949. This led Kennan and the PPS to return to the question of a unified European strategy centred on the German question. Given the relative strength of the American position and its popular support among the German people, Kennan and the PPS realised that any agreement reached at this time would undoubtedly favour the West more than the East. Through a combination of diplomatic and economic measures, alongside a political warfare campaign, the Soviet bloc could be incrementally softened up and the Eastern European states drawn over to the West by attraction rather than

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coercion. Furthermore, Marshall and Kennan recognised during the development of Program A that even if Moscow rejected initial American diplomatic gestures over the neutralisation of Germany, Washington would still gain political capital from the initiative. This was an important consideration not only in relation to Germany, but more broadly as the public relations struggle with Moscow to win over world public opinion was taken extremely seriously. Soviet rejection of American diplomatic overtures would inevitably discredit the legitimacy of Russia’s own ‘peace offensive’. Important differences between the Nitze/Acheson concept and Kennan’s position seemed to indicate that there were other advantages in pursuing a diplomatic route.17 Nitze and Acheson agreed that preponderant positions of strength should be established in Western Europe through political, military and economic initiatives prior to negotiating settlements with Moscow. This was primarily a ‘defensive’ approach that aimed to safeguard American interests in Western Europe against further Soviet-communist encroachment. In other words, this was the embodiment of a true policy of ‘containment’. Nitze claimed in his memoirs that he did not ‘consider a policy of rearmament as necessarily implying the futility of negotiations or the imminent possibility of a shooting war’.18 But there was a genuine risk that the pursuit of preponderant strength would become an end in itself, losing sight of the ultimate purpose of settling Cold War hostilities. Acheson gave an indication of this in testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on the eve of the Paris Conference of Foreign Ministers in 1949. Under questioning from Senator Arthur Vandenberg, Acheson indicated that the unification of Germany was not ‘an end in itself’ but that the key objective instead was ‘the strengthening and recovery of Western Europe’. Vandenberg challenged the Secretary of State that the US agenda at Paris appeared to be negative, seeking to gain a Soviet rejection of the American proposal in order to proceed with Germany’s partition and the establishment of NATO. With considerable prescience the senator asked: ‘Does this mean that the result of this meeting is going to establish [. . .] the fact that there is a permanent Cold War [. . .?]’ Acheson’s reply was evasive. Differences

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would not necessarily be ‘permanent’, he claimed, but the immediate task was ‘to see who develops more strength’.19 There were other disadvantages with the Nitze/Acheson concept of building up preponderant American strength. The manifestations of this programme – the ERP, NATO, the tripartite partition of Germany, etc – were perceived as offensive initiatives by Moscow and therefore as acute threats to Soviet national security. These ‘defensive’ initiatives under the Western European containment policy thereby stimulated parallel ‘defensive’ measures by the Kremlin in a response that escalated Cold War tensions and hardened the ‘lines of cleavage’ that Kennan had feared would occur in 1948.20 Paradoxically, Kennan’s belated attempt to use Western political and economic vitality as a magnet to attract Eastern European states into the Western bloc posed a much greater threat to Moscow’s grip on the region. But this more ‘offensive’ method to peacefully retract Soviet power and unite Europe on Western terms outwardly appeared to be a more benign policy to the Russians than the defensive containment policy that projected American economic and military power into Western Europe. In any case, by 1949 Kennan’s desire to employ diplomacy alongside political warfare was at odds with mainstream attitudes in Washington. A consensus was forged that was embodied by the Nitze/Acheson concept of building up positions of strength first in Western Europe and then pursuing diplomatic solutions for the Soviet bloc at an undefined later stage. This viewpoint was fortified by the perception of increasing Soviet and international communist belligerence. The result of containment was that American foreign policy was powerless to transcend the European divide, and instead tended to foster mutual US–Soviet suspicions, entrenching the bipolar schism. Washington did not devise a ‘wedge’strategy to separate Moscow from its satellites.21 On the contrary, although the Planning Staff attempted to produce a unifying strategic framework for a pan-European policy, Kennan’s window of opportunity was extremely limited. Ultimately it was not possible to gain the support of Truman, Acheson, Nitze and other senior officials, especially after autumn 1949 when the Soviet Union successfully exploded an atomic bomb and Washington suffered the

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‘loss’ of China to Mao’s communist forces. The seeming escalation of the global threat heralded by these events cemented the Truman administration’s preference for ‘militarised’ policy solutions. Although the Kennan thesis was definitively rejected with the demise of Program A in favour of the Nitze/Acheson model, American policymakers were unable to design an alternative approach to the European dilemma. From this point on, the US pursued preponderant levels of military and economic power over the Soviet adversary, yet a workable strategy for Eastern Europe was not devised to replace the obsolete political warfare offensive. Indeed, it is hard to think of any workable alternatives that could have been pursued alongside containment. Instead, a strategic vacuum was created over Soviet bloc policy, and this left the field open at the operational level for the OPC to continue to operate against the communist regimes in Eastern Europe. So long as the retraction of Soviet power was retained as an aspiration at the policy level, then it remained permissible for political warfare activists to conduct anti-communist operations against the Soviet bloc. The ill-fated campaign was always going to be ineffective because it was conducted in isolation of diplomatic attempts to produce political settlements in Central and Eastern Europe or a full-scale military conflict (unthinkable as this was) to liberate the entire area from communist control. Political warfare therefore best complemented the dichotomy at the heart of US policy in Europe. It did not hinder the development of a powerful Western bloc through political, economic and military alliances. Moreover, it offered flexible and unconventional methods to counteract Soviet-influenced communist interests in Western Europe. Political warfare also had its uses when applied to Eastern Europe. It partially assuaged those in the government who wanted to adopt a more aggressive stance against communism. Even though the strategic reality was that political warfare was impotent to affect the hegemonic Soviet position, it allowed Washington to maintain the links that had already been built up with e´migre´ groups and to retain a public commitment to the liberation of Eastern Europe. This approach did not constitute a solution to the longstanding question of how to overcome Soviet domination of Eastern Europe by

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peaceful means. Instead it fostered a perpetuation of the status quo, enabling American priorities elsewhere to be secured. At the highest levels, therefore, the Truman administration actually paid scant attention to liberating the Soviet bloc. Instead it was left to the working levels of the government, to the American missions and representatives in the region as well as to the PPS and geographic desk hands in the State Department, to attempt to utilise the scraps left over from Western European policy. De facto influence was increasingly wielded at the operational rather than policymaking level, in particular by the OPC, in the vacuum left by strategists who were at a loss to devise policies from such limited options. Isolated individual operations behind the iron curtain could never achieve the goals stated in NSC 20/4 without some sort of unifying concept to exploit political, economic and even paramilitary openings. Strategically, the policies that resulted were therefore as fragmented as the bureaucracy that had created them. NSC 68 did nothing to modify this trend of US foreign policy. The irony of that policy paper was that while it marginalised the strategic basis for political warfare by prioritising containment and American preponderant power, NSC 68 simultaneously pushed political warfare to the centre of American activity in the Cold War on an operational level. This was because of the vast increase in resources allocated to support a ‘political offensive’ that was sanctioned by NSC 68. This was not a departure from pre-existing trends but, as Michael Warner observes, a new opening, for although NSC 68 and the Korean War ‘precipitated exponential growth at OPC [. . .] it nevertheless seems clear that the Office was growing rapidly even before it received new tasking’.22 Wisner’s organisation was comprised of a dedicated group of Cold Warriors who were determined to challenge communists throughout the world, including in Moscow’s backyard in Eastern Europe. The strategic flaws at the heart of US policy towards the Soviet bloc were linked to a leadership vacuum. Senior American officials, including Truman and his secretaries of state and defense, did not want to make a strategic commitment to liberation, prioritising other elements of policy above Eastern Europe. It was within the

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context of this vacuum that NSC 68 proved to be such a potent catalyst for expanded political warfare operations. Although a viable strategy was not provided by NSC 68, the message disseminated to the operational branches of the political warfare apparatus was that action was urgently required. Joyce informed senior OPC officials at a meeting at Carmel Offie’s house on 18 April 1950 that the new national security strategy ‘if approved, will have a material effect upon OPC planning and operations’.23 According to Joyce, the OPC was now authorised to ‘take dynamic steps to reduce the power and influence of the Kremlin inside the Soviet Union’, a message he passed on verbatim from the passages of NSC 68. This would include: Intensification of affirmative and timely measures and operations by covert means in the fields of economic warfare and political and psychological warfare with a view to fomenting and supporting unrest and revolt in selected strategic satellite countries.24 While not providing strategic clarity, unmistakable ‘assumptions’ were conveyed to the OPC in May 1950 to proceed with a ‘major effort in the field of covert operations’ against the Soviet bloc and Russia itself, a campaign that was set to run for at least the next six years.25 At this stage the OPC was asked to prepare estimates of the requisite funds for the envisaged expanded programme.26 For example, on 4 May the PPS requested budgetary estimates from the OPC taking into account the expansion of covert operations sanctioned under NSC 68. This instantly encouraged, in fact obligated, the OPC to demand larger budgets and to expand its personnel strength. Wisner responded by supplying bloated budgetary estimates for the OPC ‘for the period from 1 July 1950 to 30 June 1957’. The new estimates were ‘based upon the assumptions understood to be applicable to NSC 68 and particularly the decision of the United States Government to make a major effort in the field of covert operations’.27 According to an official investigation, on the operational level the number of anti-communist projects and operations ‘simply skyrocketed’ as a result of NSC 68. The OPC’s budget expanded from US$4.7 million in 1949 to $82

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million in 1952, the number of overseas stations jumped from seven to 47 and its total personnel level reached 2,812 plus 3,142 overseas contractors in 1952, as compared to a 1949 level of just 302.28 In April and May 1950 the new policy directive had not even been approved. The twin shocks of 1949 that had motivated the drafting of NSC 68 – the successful test explosion of the Soviet atomic bomb and rise of Mao in China – had not receded in American eyes but Truman was reluctant to implement such a costly new policy that would triple US defense spending at a time when he was attempting to rein in government spending and produce balanced budgets. NSC 68 was eventually adopted following the outbreak of the Korean War. That conflict swept away Truman’s reservations about fiscal profligacy in the face of the perceived worldwide threat to US national security. Huge demands were now placed on the OPC/CIA by the NSC and the State Department. But it was Louis Johnson’s Department of Defense in particular that urged an expansion of political warfare. The Pentagon called for covert operations to be undertaken further afield than Cold War Europe – in the Far East. The OPC was directed to engage in the Korean theatre, with emphasis placed on infiltrating agents into China to conduct intelligence, propaganda and paramilitary missions behind enemy lines in support of military operations.29 General MacArthur had previously tried to keep what was regarded as the amateurish OPC out of the region, in the same way that he had resisted the encroachment of Donovan’s Office of Strategic Services in the Pacific theatre in World War II. Although the OPC had managed to initiate a limited base of operations in Asia in 1949, it was the Korean War that decisively established the CIA’s geographic scope on a much wider basis. The legacy of this expansion after Korea was that the CIA now had the capacity to undertake covert political warfare operations in the developing world in order to undermine communists, socialists and other perceived enemies of the US on a global scale.30 This larger role soon became central to the CIA’s mission as decolonisation swept aside the old European empires. Fearful that Moscow would seek to exploit power vacuums and fledgling nationalist movements in Asia, Latin America, Africa and the Middle East through its expansionist Marxist– Leninist

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ideology, from the early 1950s onwards American strategists increasingly turned to the CIA to defeat the forces of international communism. Even as the Far East was opened up to the OPC, the prevalent interpretation of the Korean War was that it was the opening salvo by Moscow in a general war. This meant that American attention was still focused substantially on Europe. After all, NSC 68 had been drafted in light of the Soviet development of the atomic bomb and was the product of the American government’s anxiety over the strategic ramifications of this on the US position in Europe.31 Consequently, approximately half of the OPC’s operational output continued to be directed towards Europe rather than the Far East for the duration of the Korean War.32 Activities included a proliferation of psychological warfare, propaganda and cultural programmes targeting the entire Soviet bloc region. This was most notably undertaken through the organisation of the ostensibly private National Committee for a Free Europe founded in June 1949 in New York. Supplementing the overt activities of Voice of America (VOA) and West Berlin’s Radio in the American Sector (RIAS), NCFE’s broadcasting arm Radio Free Europe unleashed a propaganda campaign from its headquarters in Munich targeting the populations of Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria, beginning with its first transmission to Czechoslovakia on 4 July 1950. The avowed purpose of RFE, according to the official CIA handbook issued in November 1951, was ‘to contribute to the liberation of the nations imprisoned behind the iron curtain by maintaining their morale and stimulating in them a spirit of non-cooperation with the Soviet dominated regimes’.33 This effort was complemented by the separate but parallel American Committee for the Liberation of the Peoples of Russia, which created Radio Liberty in 1951 to conduct anti-communist Russian-language broadcasts targeting the Soviet Union itself.34 This was in fact just the tip of the iceberg of the American political and psychological warfare effort against communist ideology. The US launched a ‘crusade’ against Moscow that harnessed all aspects of state and society against the Soviet foe. In practice this fostered a hidden state– private nexus that mobilised a broad range of intellectual, cultural, informational,

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political, business, labour, student, youth and women’s organisations against Soviet-communist ideology, both in the US and across the world.35 Operations aimed at unseating communist regimes through more direct paramilitary methods were also financed and directed by the US government in this period. This was first confirmed by the official Senate investigation into the CIA’s covert activities undertaken in the mid-1970s.36 Despite the provocative nature and destabilising effect of such operations on international relations, the US attempted to foster anti-government resistance movements across the region. One of the key factors that helps to explain why the CIA – through the OPC – undertook such provocative and ultimately futile actions against the Soviet bloc during the Korean War is the pressure applied by the US military establishment on the OPC to expand its quasimilitary activities. As has been noted, the prevalent feeling in the Truman administration was that Korea was the opening phase of a wider war and that the US must immediately step up its preparations for the impending hot war. As a result of Korea, the OPC was put under enormous pressure from the US military to engage in covert political warfare operations behind the iron curtain. Many of these actions blurred the distinction between preparatory missions for a hot war, and offensive Cold War operations aimed at undermining Soviet bloc power before a full-scale conflict might erupt. The OPC’s numerous projects aimed at developing links with paramilitary resistance groups in the Soviet bloc fell into this category. For example, the US Army urged the CIA to foster close ties with WIN in Poland because such contacts could prove extremely valuable in the event of a Soviet military invasion of Western Europe. Indigenous forces could then be mobilised to engage in espionage and harassment operations behind the vanguard of the Red Army. It was easy for Cold Warriors within the OPC to push the mission further, to encourage WIN and other indigenous resistance groups to actively resist Soviet control before any full-scale military conflict occurred. Hot warriors and cold warriors had different operational goals (preparation for war versus active resistance and liberation in the Cold War). But on the ground there was little difference between hot war military operations

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and Cold War paramilitary operations, given the levels of control exercised by the communist regimes backed up by Soviet military power. As has been noted previously, the vast majority of these activities were unsuccessful, whether they began life as all-out liberation projects or covert military operations prior to war.

The organisation of operations under the CIA Between 1951 and the end of the Truman administration, attempts were made to rectify organisational problems caused by the adoption of political warfare as a component of US foreign policy. Two structural developments in particular, the OPC–OSO merger and the establishment of the Psychological Strategy Board, potentially offered the administration a tighter base from which to proceed with a coordinated political warfare offensive against the Soviet Union. Arguably, these efforts represented a pragmatic way to deal with the fragmented approach that had prevailed since the creation of the OPC and the August 1948 ‘understanding’ that had partially separated it from the control of the bureaucracy. First, DCI Smith asserted the CIA’s authority over the OPC’s activities and merged political warfare with the other elements of the US intelligence system. The need for clearer control of the OPC had been brought to a head with its massive expansion under NSC 68. This was partially resolved in late 1950 by the creation of the post of Deputy Director of Plans (DDP), which provided centralised control under the DCI. After initially hesitating, DCI Smith went beyond centralisation to fully integrate political warfare and espionage/ counter-espionage in the CIA two years later. On 1 August 1952 the OPC and OSO (the Agency’s secret intelligence unit) were integrated into the new ‘Clandestine Services’, euphemistically known as the Directorate of Plans.37 The OPC-OSO merger in 1952 cemented the Agency’s responsibility and authority for political warfare, despite Smith’s personal misgivings about these activities. Further bureaucratic tensions were stimulated by the merger, in particular because it exacerbated the longstanding rivalry between the intelligence collectors

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at the OSO and the OPC’s Cold Warriors. This was embodied in Wisner’s derisive characterisation of the OSO as ‘a bunch of old washerwomen gossiping over their laundry’.38 Nonetheless, despite these tensions, centralisation and integration represented a clear step forward from the fragmented set-up that had existed since mid-1948.

The ‘magnitude paper’ and NSC 10/5 The OPC – OSO merger followed formal reaffirmation by the NSC in October 1951 of the CIA’s authority and responsibility to conduct political warfare under a new political warfare directive. That directive, NSC 10/5, resulted from DCI Smith’s attempts to disengage the CIA from the more extreme elements of the political warfare programme. When Smith joined the Agency he was ‘dismayed’ at the scale of the OPC’s expanded mandate under NSC 68. Consequently, he sought clarification of the desired ‘scope and pace of covert operations’ from the NSC once these fell squarely under his authority following the centralisation of Wisner’s group. For Smith the fundamental issue was not that the US lacked a viable strategy to guide the political warfare campaign against the Soviet bloc. His primary concern was organisational in nature. The new DCI recognised that the OPC’s enormous appetite for money and personnel could threaten to detract from the CIA’s original secret intelligence mission. Smith wanted to diminish the detrimental impact, as he saw it, that the OPC’s political warfare programme would have on the rest of the Agency. He was astounded by the scale of the covert offensive, and was chiefly concerned about organisational overstretch – that the CIA did not have the capacity to meet the demands of the political warfare programme and simultaneously continue to fulfil its secret intelligence mandate. Smith described his concerns in a letter to JCS Chairman General Omar Bradley dated 2 March 1951, in which he explained that the CIA’s responsibilities particularly in the field of planning and execution of guerrilla warfare activities, go beyond our current capabilities and

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indeed embrace operations of such magnitude that they threaten to absorb the resources of this Agency to a point which might be detrimental to its other responsibilities.39 Therefore Smith sought clarification over whether or not the CIA should retain operational responsibility for political warfare projects. In doing so, he was not trying to reopen the Kennan– Hillenkoetter debates over departmental versus CIA control and responsibility for political warfare, a point that he emphasised to the NSC in April 1951.40 Instead Smith hoped that the Soviet bloc paramilitary operations would either be terminated or transferred to the military or some other agency. To this end, in January 1951 he produced two drafts of a new political warfare directive that he hoped would supersede NSC 10/2. Through NSC 10/3 and NSC 10/4 Smith sought to distinguish between limited covert underground resistance operations waged against the Soviet bloc in the Cold War and larger semi-overt guerrilla warfare activities that would be implemented in the event of a hot war – and that should therefore be passed over to the military.41 But, despite Smith’s stated intentions, this move threatened to open up old fissures over responsibility and authority for political warfare. Robert Joyce, the OPC’s liaison at the State Department, immediately bristled at the proposed new arrangement. Joyce argued that Smith’s proposal ‘does not sufficiently assert Department of State responsibility, authority and control’ over political warfare. On the contrary, it ‘would seem to place complete control of covert operations and clandestine intelligence activities within the JCS’.42 This led to a unified response from the departmental and JCS representatives W. Park Armstrong, John Magruder and Leslie Stevens that ‘there is no alternative to the present allocation of this responsibility, almost in toto, to CIA– OPC’.43 Smith again protested in June 1951 to an ad hoc committee of NSC senior staff that the requirements placed on the OPC to undertake large-scale paramilitary operations in the Soviet bloc were turning the CIA into a ‘covert War Department’. According to Smith, ‘the major mission of the CIA is intelligence’, but the

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emphasis placed on guerrilla warfare in Eastern Europe meant that ‘the operations tail’ is ‘now starting to wag the intelligence dog’. For Smith, the key problem was that the requirement to undertake paramilitary operations was stretching the CIA’s capabilities to the limit. The ‘CIA was already spread very thin’, he warned, and this would only get worse as operational demands placed on the Agency grew. Nonetheless, the departmental liaison officials remained unanimous in their opinion that the solution was not to remove responsibility for these quasi-military operations from the CIA, as Smith had hoped. Nor was the fundamental question considered of the desirability of these operations during the Cold War. For Joyce, Magruder and Stevens the key point to extrapolate from Smith’s concerns was an assurance of proper logistical logistical support of the CIA by the military in the execution of these guerrilla warfare operations.44 Smith’s initial attempt to siphon off large-scale paramilitary operations to the military threatened to provoke another bureaucratic feud, so the DCI decided to try an alternative tack. Smith now raised the issue of the CIA’s political warfare programme in broader terms through his ‘magnitude paper’, forwarded to the NSC on 8 May 1951. The DCI urged the NSC to undertake a comprehensive review that would re-evaluate the CIA’s role in the political warfare campaign. Smith reiterated his concern that the CIA’s ‘operations are outstripping its present administrative capabilities’. As he had already outlined to Bradley, this could undermine the CIA’s secret intelligence capabilities. Smith now placed on record a further concern that ‘the increasing scope and pace of hot war preparation is tending to overshadow [the] original purpose’ of NSC 10/2, that the CIA/OPC would ‘execute covert support to cold war activities’.45 In raising this issue, Smith hoped that a NSC review would ultimately agree with him that quasi-military political warfare activities should either be formally separated from the Agency or at least scaled back.46 Smith went further in the magnitude paper. He also raised concerns about the lack of guidance from above that the OPC/CIA was receiving in relation to the political warfare offensive against the Soviet bloc. He did not quite hit the nail on the head and identify the

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lack of a unified strategy to guide US foreign policy in the Cold War, but he came close. Smith noted ‘the absence of a specific detailed plan for conducting a comprehensive cold-war program’. This remark was made in light of pragmatic rather than strategic difficulties that the CIA faced as a result of the lack of strategic guidance. According to Smith, ‘it is not possible to make an accurate estimate of manpower, mate´riel, and money required’ to undertake the political warfare offensive without first receiving comprehensive policy guidance. Smith also raised important issues in the magnitude paper that certainly flirted with fundamental questions about US Cold War strategy towards the Soviet bloc. For instance, Smith asserted that ‘[h]igh level policy decisions are required [. . .] on the direction and nature of covert operations’. According to the DCI there was a pressing need for ‘a determination of relative priorities and of the extent to which the United States is willing to support and follow up on counter-revolution in the slave states’. Again though, this was not raised as an issue of strategy for Smith but as a practical matter over the CIA’s capacity to achieve the results that might be required of it by the NSC. Smith emphasised that ‘political and mate´riel support on a national scale is required to back up and capitalize on any counterrevolution which may be engendered’.47 The DCI was primarily worried that his organisation’s capabilities would be overstretched, rather than worrying about the flawed strategy that was actually the root cause of that overstretch. Although Smith was not directly concerned about the inherent flaws within US Cold War strategy, his magnitude paper did jolt the NSC senior staff into momentarily considering the implications of the present aggressive policy towards the Soviet bloc. At a meeting held almost three weeks after Smith had first disseminated the magnitude paper, ‘considerable concern’ was expressed amongst members of the NSC senior staff that ‘the fulfillment of many of the projects’ detailed by Smith ‘might materially increase the risk of general war’. At last it was acknowledged that ‘OPC projects may inherently be more provocative’ than containment policies aimed at building up the strength of the Western world, because ‘they are designed positively to weaken the potential enemy, and in some cases

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to cause clashes’. But this point, which was of fundamental importance given that it could ignite a Third World War, was not taken up at length by the NSC senior staff. Instead they recommended that the CIA should study this issue with the recently enacted Psychological Strategy Board once it had become operational. Confusingly, however, the NSC senior staff also confirmed their unanimous view that the CIA ‘must continue to increase the scope of its activities to fulfill the enlarged mission given to it’.48 Therefore, Smith’s magnitude paper did not quite spark the strategic review of US policy towards the Soviet bloc that was sorely required. It did, however, at least raise the possibility that strategic concerns would be examined by the new PSB. It is important to emphasise that strategy was not the important issue for Smith. He hoped that the NSC would decide to cancel or transfer away the CIA/ OPC’s responsibility to undertake paramilitary operations, or at least ensure that adequate administrative, materiel and policy support in the planning and execution of them would now be provided. In one sense, Smith’s request in his magnitude paper for a highlevel review of US political warfare backfired. An NSC special committee now explicitly committed the Agency to conduct political warfare, including paramilitary and guerrilla operations against the Soviet bloc, on a very large scale.49 Smith had hoped that the CIA would be recognised principally as an intelligence agency rather than the centre for political warfare operations. Instead, the NSC formally approved ‘the immediate expansion of the covert organization established in NSC 10/2, and the intensification of covert operations’. The CIA’s responsibility under NSC 68’s expanded mandate to place ‘maximum strain on the Soviet structure of power, including the relationships between the USSR, its satellites and Communist China’ was confirmed in a new directive, NSC 10/5. The CIA must ‘when and where appropriate in the light of U.S. capabilities and the risk of war, contribute to the retraction and reduction of Soviet power and influence to limits which no longer constitute a threat to U.S. security’. It should also develop ‘underground resistance and facilitate covert and guerrilla operations in strategic areas to the maximum practicable extent’.50

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However, this was not a defeat for Smith and the CIA. NSC 10/5 brought clarity to the operational, logistical and administrative requirements that encumbered the CIA in executing the OPC’s political warfare programme. It belatedly provided some bureaucratic order to the prosecution of political warfare. Following the adoption of NSC 10/5, Smith accepted CIA responsibility for all political warfare operations and integrated the OPC with the OSO. The merger improved the management and coordination of political warfare operations under a clarified chain of command. Even after NSC 10/5 had been adopted, Smith continued to fear that the political warfare programme would ‘militate against the performance’ by the Agency of ‘its primary intelligence functions’. In a progress report to the NSC drawn up in April 1952, Smith pointed out that the ‘presently projected scope of these activities has, during the past three years, produced a three-fold increase in the clandestine operations of this Agency and will require next year a budget three times larger than that required for our intelligence activities’. He then placed on record his dissatisfaction that emphasis continued to be placed on CIA covert operations by the departments. These ‘are not functions essential to the performance by Central Intelligence Agency of its intelligence responsibilities’, he declared. Furthermore, covert operations were only ‘placed in this Agency because there was no other Department or Agency of the Government which could undertake them’ when they were first conceived by Kennan’s PPS in 1948. Smith was clearly frustrated that no alternative arrangement could be devised: ‘Regrettably, (from my personal viewpoint) it seems impracticable, for reasons of coordination and security, to divorce [the political warfare programme] from these other covert operations.’51 Once NSC 10/5 had been adopted, Smith reluctantly accepted that the CIA bore responsibility to massively expand the OPC’s political warfare campaign against the Soviet bloc. But now that the DCI’s authority over political warfare was made explicit, Smith sought to streamline the covert programme. In 1952 he established a ‘Murder Board’ to purge OPC operations that were deemed of dubious value. He had failed to extricate the CIA’s responsibility for

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Soviet bloc paramilitary operations by transferring them to the Department of Defense or by stimulating a policy-level rejection of the entire programme. But at least Smith was able to sluice these operations that now unambiguously fell under his authority. Roughly one in three projects was eventually culled by Smith’s murder board. According to Agency historian Ludwell Lee Montague, Smith’s attempts to scale back the OPC’s activities ultimately only had a ‘marginal effect’. He was not helped by the fact that his deputies Allen Dulles and Frank Wisner were opposed to it and discreetly undermined his attempt to transfer the OPC’s paramilitary activities to the Department of Defense.52 Far more importantly, political warfare planners and operators still lacked a clear unified strategy to guide the Soviet bloc operations that were not expunged by the murder board.

The rise and fall of the PSB Smith’s magnitude paper and the directive NSC 10/5 that resulted from it were not focused on the question of Soviet bloc strategy, but they indirectly shone a light on this key issue. A second development in the reorganisation of the political warfare machinery, alongside the OPC–OSO merger, could also potentially provide a forum in which the persistent problem of defining the proper role for political warfare within US Soviet bloc policy might be addressed and resolved. A coordinating body called the Psychological Strategy Board was created in April 1951 by Truman to link the operational arm the (CIA) with the departmental policymaking branches.53 The PSB was comprised of Under Secretary of State Webb, Deputy Secretary of Defense Lovett and DCI Smith, along with a staff directed by Gordon Gray. This followed the recommendations of Project TROY that ‘some single authority’ should be created with the ‘capacity to design a comprehensive program and power to obtain execution of this program’.54 Measures for tighter operational coordination were duly set up by the CIA following the establishment of the PSB and the OPC’s integration within the Agency. Smith established strict procedures governing the initiation, review and approval for all major political

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warfare projects. A CIA committee would initially review an OPC proposal and submit recommendations to Deputy Director of Plans Wisner. If he concurred, then the plan would be transmitted to the DCI, and upon the director’s acceptance it would be forwarded to the PSB for evaluation and approval.55 At the PSB the plan would be examined by a new group called the ‘10/5 Panel’ consisting of the 10/2 departmental liaison officers plus one CIA official and two PSB representatives. Once the 10/5 Panel had endorsed a plan, it would be forwarded to the PSB members for final approval.56 This rigorous process was a far cry from the lax set-up under the August 1948 ‘understanding’ and was designed to ensure that no major project could be undertaken without prior analysis and endorsement of its merits on a broad bureaucratic basis below NSC level. The modified arrangement meant that for the first time under Truman, Washington had organised all the elements of the covert apparatus in combination with a coordinating body to provide a framework for operations. The mechanisms for providing policy guidance to the OPC and for ensuring that the political warfare campaign was properly overseen by the executive branch of the US government were thereby tightened up. In practice this meant that all major projects would initially be reviewed by Smith and Wisner. The 10/2 liaison channels were also retained to provide ‘detailed, day-to-day guidance to the CIA’, along with the new mechanism, the 10/5 Panel, which would provide ‘more general guidance, including the strategic concepts to be developed by the PSB’.57 The board would then pass final judgement on all major political warfare initiatives. Despite these procedural improvements, in late 1952 several key principals – Joyce and Outerbridge Horsey at the PPS, and Smith at the CIA – voiced their dissatisfaction with the inadequate provision of political warfare policy guidance from the departments to the CIA. Joyce raised concerns to Under Secretary of State Bruce that the extent of the State Department’s policy guidance to the CIA often amounted to a ‘green light’ or ‘no objection’ in relation to proposed operations, and that this was ‘entirely inadequate’.58 Joyce also identified the prevalence of ‘informal contacts’ based on ‘personal friendship’ between the OPC and the departments. The result of this was that the proper

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channels for providing policy guidance and operational oversight to the OPC were often still being bypassed by political warfare activists in Washington and in the field. Joyce insisted that from now on all policy guidance must be organised through the PPS in order to guard against uncoordinated and informal contact, and to ensure that all political warfare projects received official clearance.59 Joyce had identified a serious breach of protocol. These often ignored procedures (according to Joyce) were designed to ensure security, consistency with US foreign policy objectives, a clear chain of command and strict accountability for political warfare operations. The lax policy guidance and oversight arrangements originated in the loose set-up instigated by Kennan back in August 1948. Joyce’s PPS colleague Horsey concurred with these observations. Horsey believed that the system based on OPC liaison channels had only partially worked so far because the personalities involved had enjoyed a harmonious working relationship, but the arrangement itself was entirely inadequate. He agreed with Joyce that the prevalence of State– CIA working-level relationships meant that OPC consultants at the policy level were often getting sidestepped by activists on the operations level, or worse, the liaison mechanism was not used at all. Horsey also pointed to a ‘tendency toward free-wheeling at the operating level’ in the OPC that must be addressed if ‘covert operations are to be a really effective arm of foreign policy’. A handwritten aside on the memorandum noted the derisive view within the OPC that any ‘new idea’ proposed by the CIA would be considered ‘free-wheeling’ by the State Department.60 This was indicative of the gulf in attitudes separating the OPC and the State Department over the importance of ensuring that operations were tightly coordinated to conform to general foreign policy objectives. By late 1952 Smith agreed with Joyce and Horsey that despite the establishment of the PSB these imperfections had still not been eliminated. In a memorandum to the PSB members, Smith acknowledged that political warfare activists must be given some autonomy, because ‘in the field of cold war both vision and imagination are essential’. But, he insisted, ‘these qualities must be controlled by selective judgment of a detached, objective authority’. In diverting some

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of the blame for this back to the State Department, according to Smith the CIA had been compelled ‘to assume too much responsibility and authority’ as a result of inadequate guidance and oversight from the departments. The DCI proposed that a new ‘reviewing group’ should be established, consisting of ‘a few highly qualified officers’ from the departments to advise the PSB on political warfare matters.61 The problem went deeper for Smith than simply procedural matters over the issuance of policy guidance. Smith wanted the PSB to move beyond simply coordinating operations between departments to instead provide a unifying strategic conception for the political warfare campaign. At the PSB’s preliminary meeting organised by Smith on 8 May 1951, Dulles (CIA), Wisner (OPC), Edward Barrett (State Department), Magruder (Department of Defense) and Stevens (JCS) met the DCI to discuss the new group’s role. Smith proposed that ‘PSB should have as one of its functions taking high policy from NSC and other sources and translating this into psychological warfare objectives.’ This effectively meant that the PSB would translate policy into strategy in order to provide specific guidance to the CIA/OPC on political warfare matters. Smith hoped that the PSB could ‘constitute a “general staff” for the cold war’ so that this onerous responsibility would not fall squarely on the shoulders of CIA officials at an operational level.62 In a subsequent PSB meeting in July, Smith reiterated his view that the PSB should take on broad strategic responsibilities. But at this meeting he revealed that his core motivation was not to address strategic deficiencies within US Soviet bloc policy. Instead he hoped that the PSB’s piecemeal allocation of covert operations would result in paramilitary and guerrilla warfare projects being reassigned to the military rather than the CIA. He asserted that ‘the principal factor missing in our psychological set-up at the present time is a “master plan”’, and that ‘economic programs, covert missions, and [Voice of America] policies should be related to it’. Smith then urged the Board members to endorse his view that the ‘PSB and its Staff should work on the preparation of this master plan and act as a high-level project review board to allocate missions to the various agencies and to survey the effectiveness of operations in progress’.63 He made the point even more explicitly at another PSB meeting four weeks later,

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when he recommended that the quasi-military political warfare operations should be handed to agencies other than the CIA. Smith reasoned that once ‘an over-all psychological strategy plan’ had been developed by the PSB, ‘[o]ther [a]gencies and the Army, which is concerned only with the tactical military phase of operations, would then be able to carry out assigned missions’.64 Smith was not attempting to step on the State Department’s toes by overreaching the PSB’s authority to become a policymaking body. He was actually bidding to establish a process at PSB level for rationalising the implementation of US foreign policy, as passed onto him as DCI by the departments. He hoped that the CIA would then be in a position to justify which operations it should and should not undertake. The paramilitary, retardation and underground resistance projects that had mushroomed since the Korean War and NSC 68 could now (he hoped) be passed to the military or terminated, rather than going to the CIA. Smith’s endeavour was immediately overtaken by organisational wrangling. The PSB had been vested with broad but ambiguous responsibility for coordinating and assessing the ‘psychological’ dimension of Cold War activities. Yet its precise role within the bureaucracy for transmitting ‘guidance’ on political warfare was not clearly stipulated, while as a body it was not vested with sufficient authority to challenge the Departments of State and Defense. Moreover, the DCI’s fellow board members were the departmental under secretaries. The attempt led by Smith to have PSB explore the question of a Cold War strategy was therefore not well received. An acrimonious squabble ensued over the PSB’s jurisdiction with the State Department, in particular. This friction overshadowed all of the PSB’s subsequent attempts to develop a coherent strategy for the CIA’s Soviet bloc operations. Two conflicting interpretations of the PSB’s role lay at the heart of the conflict. One opinion, held by many in the CIA and the PSB staff, viewed the new body expansively as the ‘headquarters for the Cold War’. According to this interpretation, ‘the Board’s concern would embrace any or all of the major policies, programs or activities of the Government’. The PSB should therefore be recognised as exercising sufficient authority to engage in broad strategic assessments, pulling the

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overall effort together on a conceptual level to ensure the consistent, unified and coordinated implementation of policy. The conflicting view prevailed primarily in the State Department, but also at the Pentagon, that the PSB should have a much more limited role. The PSB should evaluate individual ‘programs specifically identified as psychological operations’. From this perspective, the PSB would merely ‘provide a forum for the exchange of ideas and information, a committee type structure for the coordination of psychological plans’. It should not broach fundamental questions of policy and strategy as these were departmental prerogatives.65 Even before the PSB had been established by Truman, members of the State Department had voiced their objections over the creation of a ‘superboard’.66 The State Department bitterly opposed, on principle, the establishment of the PSB. For instance, Webb argued that it was ‘impossible [. . .] to entrust the formulation and execution of policies and programs of political warfare to an agency not subject or subordinate to the Department of State’.67 State Department officials were worried that the PSB would cut across its jurisdiction as the principal foreign policymaking office in the government in political warfare matters. Nitze, as director of the PPS, also objected to the PSB on the grounds that its creation had been recommended in the external TROY report. In Nitze’s view, the TROY group had ‘explored a field for which it had no special competence and about which it had little information’. This criticism of TROY was ironic considering that the State Department had commissioned the consultancy work in the first place. In any case, Nitze accepted the PSB once it had been established, but immediately sought to clarify that it should only perform a limited coordinating role that would not encroach on the State Department’s policymaking terrain: [T]he board should bring about a sharpening of effort in regard to our behind-the-iron-curtain information program, our defector program, our covert activities within the adversary’s fold, and the like. It should seek to ensure that no opportunity for such activities goes unexploited and that the activities are consistent among the various agencies carrying them out.68

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However, Nitze warned that if the PSB was authorised to ‘formulate programs “geared for psychological effect” in the field of military, political and economic action’ then this would be an egregious infringement of the State Department’s jurisdiction, as ‘there would be no stopping place short of assuming jurisdiction over the whole range of our foreign policy-ends and means’.69 The PSB staff quickly took a broad view of their role to develop an all-encompassing strategy to orchestrate the growing number of Soviet bloc operations stimulated by NSC 68 and NSC 10/5. PSB Director Gordon Gray believed this had been Truman’s intention and that his charter was ‘to draw a plan for the cold war’.70 NSC 10/5 also seemed to confirm the importance of the new body on the strategic level by making the PSB responsible for determining ‘the desirability and feasibility of programs and of individual major projects for covert operations formulated by or proposed to the Director of Central Intelligence’. NSC 10/5 also assigned the PSB with responsibility for determining ‘the scope, pace, and timing of covert operations and the allocation of priorities among these operations’.71 The broad interpretation of the PSB’s role stimulated fractious debates within the Truman administration over who controlled the formulation of American foreign policy. The PSB staff and the CIA were eager to confront the strategic dilemma over how to proceed against the Soviet bloc, recommending the adoption of an explicitly offensive strategy to replace what some regarded as the defeatist and passive containment strategy.72 Yet, following requests from the State Department for clarification of the PSB’s ‘purpose and jurisdiction’ in order to not only ‘avoid jurisdictional conflicts at the top level but also to develop harmonious collaboration in day-to-day relationships at all levels’, the more restrictive view of the PSB’s role favoured by the departments was approved in September 1951.73 Despite this, the board continued to broach strategic questions where they invariably overlapped with operational plans. In November 1951, the PSB requested that the OPC draw up a programme ‘for the successful detachment of these satellites, including China, with or without revolution, where feasibility is believed to exist’. Such plans were to include a detailed breakdown of their ‘feasibility,

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priority, emphasis and pace’ along with their ‘manpower and logistic requirements’.74 At the first meeting of Gray’s PSB Director’s Group, also held in November 1951, it was clear that strategic clarity was badly needed to temper some of the astonishingly unrealistic ideas that were suggested within this new committee. A psychological campaign against Moscow was proposed ‘as a high-hearted crusade – gay, dashing, gleaming, even hilarious – a crusade to let in light; to let people everywhere choose how they wish to be governed – a crusade that stands in warm psychological contrast to the deadly, cold, humourless “double-speak” of the Kremlin’. As well as these naive and simplistic pronouncements, an outline table of proposed operations was also discussed at this meeting that was utterly out of touch with the geopolitical reality of Soviet-communist hegemonic power in Eastern Europe. According to this timetable, between 1952 and 1956 the US would recognise Eastern European governments-inexile as official allies. It would then stimulate and provide aid to uprisings in the Soviet bloc and the USSR itself, deterring Soviet military intervention through the ‘[t]hreat of [h]eavy [r]etaliation for Soviet [i]nterference’. Thus, by 1956 the liberation of the Soviet bloc would be achieved, encompassing the ‘[c]ollapse of the World Communist Movement’, as well as ‘World Disarmament’ enforced through inspections and a resumption of trade with Russia and the former satellite states.75 These proposals were whimsical fantasy, posited by Gray’s inexperienced new group of staff-level bureaucrats. But the CIA did now have impetus from the high-level PSB members and from the 10/2 liaison officials to develop a political warfare programme. Members of the State Department, including Nitze and Bohlen, continued to resist Smith’s advocacy of a ‘central strategic concept’ for the Cold War.76 But the CIA was now tasked with developing a coordinated set of offensive covert operations against the Soviet bloc, codenamed Packet. The Packet report was completed and submitted to the PSB for review on 20 March 1952. It consisted of a budget analysis of suggested operations for the fiscal year 1953 and an overview of all proposed programmes and major projects that would

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cost more than US$50,000 to implement. The report was 300 pages long and consisted of roughly 100 such major projects, giving an indication of the huge scale of the political warfare endeavour that was envisaged, and that DCI Smith had already questioned in his magnitude memorandum.77 Moreover, the OPC was champing at the bit. OPC’s Assistant Director Colonel Johnston informed Joyce at the State Department that should Packet be sanctioned by the PSB, then the OPC ‘would consider that it had finally obtained a charter which would permit it to expand in a large way’. Following the approval of Packet, the OPC would ‘start creating on a world-wide basis an impressive covert apparatus necessary to accomplish the requirements laid upon OPC’ under NSC 68 and NSC 10/5.78 The main problem was not actually the scope of these envisaged operations, but the lack of a coherent strategy to underpin them based on objectives that US political warfare could realistically hope to achieve in the Soviet bloc. When Packet was submitted, a decision was still pending at senior government levels on whether or not to approve a liberation campaign that was at the heart of many of the proposed operations within it. In May, PSB Deputy Director Tracy Barnes, who was now acting as chairman of the 10/5 panel overseeing the covert political warfare programme, requested a firm clarification of the American commitment to achieve liberation in order to implement Packet. Barnes acknowledged that NSC 10/5 had not resolved questions raised by Smith’s magnitude paper over exactly what was permitted under US Soviet bloc policy. According to Barnes, ‘10/5 in effect says to CIA, “We recognize your need for guidance; we will not spell it out for you ourselves; we will, however, provide you with a mechanism which should resolve your dilemmas.”’ That mechanism was supposed to be the PSB. Barnes asked PSB members DCI Smith, Under Secretary of State David Bruce and Assistant Secretary of Defense William Foster whether US policy endorsed ‘supplying overt physical support to revolutionary factions that might emerge in the wake of Stalin’s death, if the situation offered a reasonable chance of changing a regime to suit U.S. interests without precipitating general war’. Barnes also hoped for an unequivocal decision on whether American

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policy included or excluded ‘efforts under any circumstances to overthrow or subvert the governments of the satellites of the U.S.S.R.’. Furthermore, Barnes recommended that if it was decided that US policy excluded such efforts, ‘then any OPC projects directed primarily or largely to those ends should be eliminated’.79 The full bearing of these strategic questions was not even grasped by Barnes. He claimed that examination of Packet by the 10/5 panel ‘has convinced us that many of the “Magnitude”-type issues still demand clarification and that serious Board consideration is essential’. Yet he did not urge suspension of the programme until strategic clarity had been established. Instead he asserted that the PSB ‘in our opinion need not delay its approval of much, perhaps all, of the “Packet”’. This new portfolio of Soviet bloc operations was therefore approved, despite strategic ambiguity persisting at the heart of the campaign. Moreover, although Barnes had raised strategic issues such as whether or not the US supported revolutions in the Soviet bloc, he also insisted that ‘no inference is intended that the Board is responsible for resolving the questions’. Instead, ‘with respect to the OPC program’, Barnes felt that the PSB should merely ‘be fully acquainted with the answers from whatever source derived’. Again the buck had been passed. In Barnes’ view, the PSB was not responsible for making policy. It was only required to provide ‘interpretations’ of policy in order that the OPC’s political warfare programme could be properly implemented.80 Smith had also already questioned in the magnitude paper the extent of US support for counter-revolution in the Soviet bloc. He had argued that these operations would intrinsically be highly visible and, therefore, Washington’s role could hardly be plausibly denied. He hoped that clarity on this issue would encourage the NSC to tone down the OPC’s political warfare activities. Joyce now stepped in and indicated that ‘these questions trouble us here in the State Department’ as well. Joyce advised State’s member of the PSB Bruce that clarity should be obtained over whether the creation of an extensive ‘covert apparatus’ – including ‘large bases for training guerrilla warriors and for staging air drops behind the lines in case of war’ – was desirable and consistent with the plausible denial

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stricture. Joyce voiced concerns to the under secretary that these types of activities could have ‘important political repercussions in peacetime’. But again, resolution of these questions was suspended in the bureaucratic treadmill. Joyce advised Bruce that Smith should answer these queries.81 It had been Smith who had raised concerns over these very issues a year previously in his magnitude paper, and who had requested that a high-level review be undertaken above the DCI. These strategic questions had taken a circular route through the bureaucracy back to the DCI without being resolved. Because a highlevel decision was not forthcoming, Smith took matters into his own hands and used the murder board to review and subsequently cull a large portion of Packet instead.82 Wisner also pressed for strategic affirmation of an offensive campaign, authorising Mallory Browne, director of the PSB’s Office of Evaluation and Review, to produce an ‘Overall Strategic Concept for our Psychological Operations’. Browne concluded that ‘an offensive concept of psycho-strategy requires less an official change of policy than a frank recognition of what is really implicit in our existing policy objectives’. According to Browne, strategic coherence could be generated by ‘abandoning “containment” and openly espousing “liberation”’. He believed that the Soviet Union was ‘a colossus with feet of clay’, but that the US must adopt ‘a positive approach that acknowledges the vital necessity of overthrowing the Kremlin regime’ before it could achieve positive results. Moreover, Browne insisted that ‘our present strategy of fighting a defensive delaying action in the Cold War while we prepare primarily to defend ourselves in a hot one’ should be discarded and replaced with ‘a fully planned and phased global strategy of offensive underground fighting’.83 The argument made by some PSB and CIA officials for an offensive against the Soviet bloc failed to overcome the more tempered (and indeed realistic) views widely held in the State Department and the wider administration over US capabilities to bring about the envisaged Cold War victory and ‘liberation’ of Eastern Europe. The firm entrenchment of communist regimes with ruthlessly effective internal security systems, buttressed by close politico-military links to the Soviet Union, negated the viability of regime change through

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isolated political warfare operations. A pre-emptive US military campaign had been explicitly ruled out for several years, while by 1952 the prospect that diplomatic negotiations could bear any fruit was remote. Nonetheless, contradictions and ambiguity in the State Department position deepened during Truman’s final year in office. Although the Bohlen thesis urged a retrenchment of policy towards genuine containment, the Nitze camp maintained that political warfare should be retained in order to retract Soviet power once a sufficient level of preponderant strength had been achieved by the US. For instance, in July 1952 Nitze raised objections to a newly drafted reappraisal of US national security strategy in the Cold War. According to Nitze, the draft paper NSC 135 implied that ‘we cannot roll back Soviet power nor hope that the successful containment of Soviet power will produce any significant changes in the nature of the Soviet system’. The PPS disagreed with this hypothesis and felt that NSC 135’s limited goal ‘is inadequate and also unrealistic. We do not believe that the situation can remain indefinitely static. One side will gain and the other will decline as a factor in world affairs. It must be our objective to be the one which gains.’84 The State Department’s determination to retain a tight grip on policy formulation meant that it continued to resist enabling the PSB to become the ‘cold war general staff’ that DCI Smith craved.85 The attempt by the PSB and the CIA to clarify US Soviet bloc strategy was therefore frustrated. This bred confusion over the strategic methods and goals within US policy, and paralysis over the authorisation of Packet, but it did not result in a high-level rejection of liberation. The strategic question did not reach Truman or the NSC, because the State Department resisted the PSB’s attempts to broaden its role within the bureaucracy.86 Departmental officials such as Nitze and Charles Burton Marshall in the Planning Staff remained adamant that the PSB must be kept in check. Although the CIA and JCS accepted that the board should exercise wide responsibilities to cover ‘every kind of activity in support of U.S. policies except overt shooting war and overt economic warfare’, Nitze and Marshall were determined that its remit must instead be defined narrowly. A ‘more

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conservative concept’ was necessary ‘to set limits – rather than leave practically un-delimited the jurisdiction of the Board’ in order to avoid ‘duplication of and conflict with pre-existing agencies’.87 Nitze and Marshall opposed the concept of the PSB as a ‘headquarters for the cold war’ as this would be ‘a source of potential mischief’.88 Nitze lobbied Webb (and later Bruce) to ensure that the PSB would only link the agencies engaged in narrowly defined psychological operations, to guarantee that it did not infringe on the State Department’s bailiwick.89 The State Department prevailed in blocking the PSB, despite implicit encouragement from NSC directives and the recommendation of a progress report that the PSB should ‘give increased emphasis to forward and strategic planning and to the evaluation of the total national psychological effort’.90 The PSB complained that departmental obstruction would perpetuate the lack of an ‘agreed strategic concept’ of ‘clarification of basic national policy’ and of ‘fully developed plans to implement national policy’. John Ferguson immediately counter-attacked for the State Department against the ‘fallacy’ of the PSB’s charges. He claimed that far more pertinent were ‘the difficulties of the present international situation, the insufficiency of U.S. capabilities to affect the situation as markedly as we should like to be able to, and, admittedly, some failure in applying the capabilities we do have as effectively as we might’.91 Charles Marshall objected in particular to the PSB’s attempts to draw up strategic plans that were based on ‘the faulty assumptions that foreign policy objectives are measurable time scales like military objectives, and that a government can achieve control of the factors that bear on its national situation in the same sense that a commander can control the factors that bear on a tactical situation’. According to Marshall, ‘indulgence in the belief that it is so is the source of trouble in the conduct of policy in general and in State– PSB relationships in particular’.92 The failure to define US strategy left some officials within the administration exasperated. PSB Director Gordon Gray recalled how ‘the State Department felt that this was an invasion of their business’. PPS chief Paul Nitze warned Gray against attempting to produce

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analyses of US strategy. At one point Nitze brashly told Gray, ‘Look, you just forget about policy, that’s not your business; we’ll make the policy and then you can put it on your damn radio.’ Departmental obstruction left the PSB Director with ‘a feeling of complete frustration’, and, in his view, diminished the PSB to ‘largely an abortive organization, because most of the agencies wouldn’t cooperate’ for the remainder of Truman’s incumbency.93 Smith was also disappointed with the PSB’s lack of progress in clarifying US Cold War strategy. In October 1952 he reported with dutiful restraint that: ‘PSB, as presently constituted, has not so far accomplished all of the results which I myself had hoped for.’ Smith held out the hope that the PSB could be transformed into ‘a really meaningful body’ that would embody ‘the device through which all of our major cold war activities are considered and approved’. Wisner asserted that what Smith really wanted was a policy mechanism that would ‘more closely commit the Department to responsibility for sensitive and exceedingly costly [political warfare] activities’.94 In other words, the priority for Smith was to shield the CIA from the excesses of the political warfare programme by diluting its responsibility through drawing in the departments. Smith recognised that crippling political fallout could result from criticism of the Agency by Congress, the departments or the American public – should scandals or controversies emerge from the political warfare campaign. Therefore, Smith continued to be motivated by institutional loyalty to protect the Agency, rather than broader concerns over the state of the national strategy to prosecute the Cold War. But because Smith’s efforts were bureaucratically motivated, they generated administrative skirmishes. The same old tensions over responsibility and authority for political warfare that had underscored the development of NSC 4-A and NSC 10/2 were reignited. Smith, just like his predecessor Hillenkoetter, hoped that the departments would take on greater responsibility for political warfare, to safeguard the Agency from future scandals. The State Department as the official locus of US foreign policy continued to resist assuming direct responsibility for this controversial programme.

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To make matters worse, at the same time that the State Department was attempting to emasculate the PSB there was also an increasing demand to determine the strategic basis of US policy towards the Soviet bloc. Serious doubts within the government were raised during 1952 over both the present course of vacillation and a more offensive campaign. In August a PSB progress report on political warfare operations painted a gloomy picture of US achievements to date, stating that ‘short term possibilities of any improvement in this respect appeared so slight as to be negligible’.95 A CIA report disseminated to the NSC in the same month painted a slightly more optimistic picture, noting that although ‘Soviet power and influence have not been reduced to any measurable extent’ in Eastern Europe, it was felt that ‘U.S. capabilities for future covert operations have increased’. This was certainly true in terms of the expenditure that had been channelled into the political warfare programme under NSC 68 and NSC 10/5. CIA analysts were also more upbeat about the prospects for future success: Recent covert operations have revealed that the Communist authorities do not have complete control of the situation in these countries, and that the area can be successfully penetrated. Thanks to much valuable experience gained in the techniques of covert psychological warfare and political action in Eastern Europe, CIA now possesses capabilities for influencing large segments of labor, youth, refugees, persecutees, women, religious groups, and political parties.96 Nevertheless, an important unresolved policy question was raised in this report. It was noted that ‘present policy provides for U.S. support of anti-regime resistance’ in the USSR. However, it further stated: ‘CIA sees a definite need for resolving the policy question of the extent to which it will be permitted to support clandestinely and exploit operationally any group or individual actively interested in the destruction of the Bolshevik regime.’97 Uncertainty over the extent of American support for revolutionary forces was raised specifically in relation to overthrowing the Soviet government. Ambiguity also

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surrounded US policy towards the Soviet bloc regimes across Eastern Europe, although this was not raised in the paper. A reappraisal of US objectives and strategy for national security undertaken by the NSC staff was disseminated as NSC 135/1 to NSC members in mid-August to try to bring some clarity to proceedings. The NSC staff continued to conform to the State Department’s official position that the peaceful retraction of Soviet power from Eastern Europe could be achieved through the build-up of preponderant American strength. It was argued in NSC 135/1 that ‘if the free world develops such [preponderant] strength, the internal conflicts of the Soviet totalitarian system should, with positive effort from us, subsequently cause a retraction of Soviet power and influence and eventually cause that system gradually to weaken and decay’. However, it was also acknowledged that ‘no time limit can be established by which these objectives will be achieved’. A cautionary tone was struck in this report. The expansion and intensification of the political warfare offensive against the Soviet bloc should continue, but ‘we should not over-estimate the effectiveness of the activities we can pursue within the Soviet orbit’.98 Expectations should be kept low in terms of the available US capabilities achieving policy objectives. Smith and the OPC liaison officials all felt that the army in particular entertained wildly exaggerated notions about the capabilities of Wisner’s organisation in the paramilitary and retardation fields, stemming from ‘almost complete ignorance of Eastern Europe and what a highly developed totalitarian police state could accomplish in the way of snuffing out anything remotely related to so-called resistance organizations’.99 The NSC staff report counseled that Washington ‘should proceed with a careful weighing of the risks against the possible gains in pressing upon what the Kremlin probably regards as its vital interests’.100 This went to the heart of the strategic dilemma for US policymakers. Could the stricture to avoid provoking war with Moscow over Eastern Europe really be reconciled with the aspiration of liberating the Soviet bloc? The answer was that these two elements – peace and liberation– could not be reconciled. But once again this fundamental conclusion was not explicitly recognised. Instead, the

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issue was fudged by incorporating an incremental policy that asserted the need to carefully balance the risks of war with efforts to roll back the Soviet bloc. The PSB had been grappling with strategic issues due to its responsibility to coordinate and review the political warfare programme. In November 1952, the PSB released a report ‘to outline a strategic concept for a national psychological program with particular reference to cold war operations under NSC 10/5’ that reflected on the concerns raised by the NSC staff paper. ‘We are unable at present to propose a strategic concept which outlines a program designed to bring about a final solution of the cold war,’ the PSB members admitted, ‘because (a) we do not have and cannot clearly foresee the time when we will have the capabilities, and (b), because without adequate capabilities the risks involved are clearly disproportionate to the probabilities of success.’ Therefore, the PSB recommended that ‘the progressive retraction and reduction of Soviet power and influence in accordance with our capabilities and subject to the limitation of acceptable risk be accepted as the interim strategic concept for a national psychological program with particular reference to cold war operations under NSC 10/5’. Despite there being no viable means of liberating the Soviet bloc without recourse to war, the political warfare campaign would be allowed to continue through its justification within an ‘interim’ gradualist strategy.101

Dissent in the ranks over Soviet bloc strategy By 1952 splits were also materialising in the leadership of the merged CIA/OPC over the best way to proceed against the Soviet bloc. The head of the OPC’s Soviet bloc division Franklin Lindsay, despite his initial enthusiasm for guerrilla operations, now had serious doubts over the strategic feasibility of these activities. Lindsay became disillusioned with the dismal record of failed attempts by the OPC to detach a communist country from the Soviet orbit through paramilitary operations. He gradually recognised that on the operational level ‘the odds are almost 100 percent that the nascent resistance would be fully penetrated [by the communist secret police] before it expanded to a size

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that made any difference’. In his own words, Lindsay ‘began to have real doubts about rolling back the iron curtain’ on a broader strategic level: ‘It was peacetime, not wartime. The stuff that had worked against the Germans did not work against the Russians, who seemed impervious. It was time to back off and think this thing through.’102 In October 1952 Lindsay penned a nine-page memorandum to his superiors Frank Wisner and Allen Dulles in which he criticised the basis of the political warfare campaign: The instruments currently advocated to reduce Soviet power are both inadequate and ineffective against the Soviet political system. The consolidated Communist state [. . .] has made virtually impossible the existence of organized clandestine resistance capable within the foreseeable future of appreciably weakening the power of the state [. . .] Guerrilla action in interior areas of the Soviet Union is impossible because of the impossibility of establishing a base relatively secure from Soviet police control. Areas bordering the Soviet sphere are without exception controlled by minor or secondary states, and the fear of provoking Soviet aggression effectively deters these states from supporting guerrilla operations across their borders.103 Yet Allen Dulles, in particular, refused to accept the fallibility of political warfare as an operational expedient and took umbrage with Lindsay’s rebuke line by line.104 Dulles continued to be enamoured with these activities. Despite the setback of the WIN operation in December 1952, the Soviet bloc appeared to be ripe for liberation at this time. In Prague, the show trial and execution of former Communist Party secretary Rudolf Slansky and ten other senior party officials, plus the emergence of the so-called ‘doctor’s plot’ against Stalin seemed to indicate instability and an atmosphere of paranoia behind the iron curtain.105 Dulles’ continued support for political warfare would have ramifications on the future course of the CIA’s operations, as soon afterwards he was appointed DCI by the incoming President Eisenhower. This opened up new opportunities for the employment of political warfare, regardless of whether or not

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US strategy had been clarified, not only in Europe and the Far East but on a worldwide basis as the Cold War broadened in scope and reach. Joyce too, who for four long years had worked closely with the OPC in his post at the PPS, now also argued that the strategic basis of the entire political warfare campaign was simply unfeasible: It has become impossible, with only the existing techniques and contacts [. . . ] to operate in the satellite area of Eastern Europe. The perfection of totalitarian police state techniques is approaching ‘1984’ efficiency to a degree where ‘resistance’ can probably exist only in the minds of the enslaved peoples of the Soviet orbit in Europe.106 Although Joyce had initially been a staunch advocate of the political warfare programme, his faith in the OPC’s Soviet bloc offensive was irreversibly shaken by the Polish government’s exposure of the WIN debacle. He now declared that in light of the Polish experience and the numerous other failures, the ‘entire subject of cold war activities by clandestine means directed against the Soviet orbit in Eastern Europe should be studied’, either by the PSB or by another body such as the Jackson Committee under the incoming Eisenhower administration.107 ***** In its last year in office, the Truman administration failed to define a unifying concept for its strategy towards the Soviet bloc that either embraced liberation or accepted a de facto Soviet sphere of influence in Eastern Europe. Its indecision meant that policy continued to chart an ineffective and contradictory middle course that retained offensive and moderate features. In NSC 135/3, one of the final policy statements issued by the Truman administration, it was recommended that the US continue to expand and intensify ‘as practicable’ its ‘positive political, economic, propaganda and paramilitary operations against the Soviet orbit’, as long as this did not entail undefined ‘unacceptable risks’. Despite widespread doubts

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over the desirability of the Titoist strategy, the policy paper also still pressed for ‘the exploitation of rifts between the USSR and other communist states thus possibly offering to certain satellite peoples the prospect of liberation without war’.108 The internal policy contradictions were borne out in NSC 135/3 and NSC 141 that followed.109 Having left the space open for Cold War activists to pursue offensive operations, these policy papers simultaneously urged their restraint. They were ‘valedictory’ policy statements released on the cusp of the change of administration.110 Yet these policy-level contradictions were far more significant than this might suggest, stemming from an awkward accommodation of Bohlen’s contention that the Soviet priority was to protect its vital interests, not to pursue global expansion as had been stated in NSC 68. If Bohlen’s hypothesis was correct, then Washington was faced with an unwelcome paradox. Should the campaign to retract Soviet power ever show signs of success, then logically it would generate a considerable risk of Soviet reprisal against the US or the Eastern European populations in order to protect its position. In other words, the closer to liberation the US came, the greater the risk of provoking war. Bohlen therefore concluded that US objectives could not be achieved without the removal of the Soviet regime, an outcome that everyone inside the Truman administration agreed was inconceivable by political warfare or any other means short of war. Bohlen came to the logical conclusion that the US must therefore adopt a genuine strategy of containment. This would entail building up the West and relying on a ‘doctrine of rational hope’ that the Soviet Union, would over the long term, sow the seeds of its own collapse.111 Bohlen’s argument pulled NSC 135/3 back from propounding policies that would take Washington to the brink of war over Eastern Europe. Again a cautionary note was included (as had been in NSC 135/1), flagging up that ‘we should not over-estimate the effectiveness of the activities we can pursue within the Soviet orbit’. Nevertheless, there was still no definitive rejection of the offensive Soviet bloc programme. Instead, as has already been noted, political warfare agitators were warned to ‘proceed with

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caution and a careful weighing of the risks in pressing upon what the Kremlin probably regards as its vital interests’.112 But the accommodation of both poles of foreign-policy establishment thinking exacerbated rather than mediated these differences. Nitze was greatly vexed by the policy adjustment to incorporate Bohlen’s views, and continued to claim that Washington would be able to roll back Soviet power as called for by NSC 20/4 and NSC 68 through military preponderance. Under NSC 135/3 he felt that the US would become ‘a sort of hedge-hog, unattractive to attack, but basically not very worrisome over a period of time beyond our immediate position’.113 The policy that resulted from this unresolved difference of opinion was therefore strategically contradictory and inconsistent. The growing pessimism over US capabilities to influence the Soviet bloc was contrasted by the call for an even more aggressive approach by government officials and external consultants at a Princeton conference in May 1952. At Princeton, Cold War activists such as Allen Dulles and C. D. Jackson justified the adoption of a more offensive Soviet bloc policy by emphasising the moral imperative of such action. At the conclusion of the conference, the participants declared that ‘it is a basic tenet of American policy that liberty shall be restored’ to the Soviet bloc nations.114 Reflecting the high proportion of Eisenhower devotees at the conference, the delegates declared that the present administration ‘is guilty of negligence with respect to the peoples behind the iron curtain’. The attempt by the Princeton delegates to elaborate on a more effective policy helped to perpetuate the misguided notion that liberation could be achieved by peaceful means. But Princeton did not provide practical strategic solutions, because there simply weren’t any. Harking back to the PSB’s efforts, it was claimed that liberation could be achieved through a broad, all-encompassing offensive so long as the ‘essence of political warfare’ was adhered to; that ‘it is planned and the means employed to carry it on are coordinated’. Urging that ‘a lesson in the importance of political warfare’ must be learned, the conferees agreed that ‘we ourselves are free to engage in political warfare without fearing what we most intensely fear – that

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by so doing we shall unleash a third world war’.115 This confident outlook jarred with the experience of American operators to date who had continuously found that Moscow’s domination over the Soviet bloc was not susceptible to limited American political warfare operations. It was clear that by 1952 a more aggressive political warfare programme to retract Soviet power from Eastern Europe would unquestionably provoke a decisive military response, because the Kremlin would not tolerate such a direct threat to its national security. In practice, therefore, Princeton did not resolve the strategic dilemmas that had for so long troubled the Truman government. Nor did it provide a ready resolution for the incoming Eisenhower administration. The most damning conclusion of the entire Cold War campaign against the Soviet bloc was drawn by Joyce, the Truman administration’s political warfare expert who had straddled the OPC and the State Department since 1948. On 27 January 1953, just as he was preparing to leave the PPS with the outgoing administration, Joyce wrote to Under Secretary Matthews to convey ‘certain conclusions I have reached as a result of four years close working relationship with OPC of CIA’. In particular, Joyce hoped to point out conclusions reached by the PPS over fundamental issues that the incoming Eisenhower administration would have to deal with ‘in the immediate future as they relate to the presumed new policy of more “dynamism” with regard to the conduct of the cold war’. Joyce then rattled off a litany of failures that had undermined the entire Soviet bloc operation under Truman. For a start, the political warfare programme had been allowed to stray from US foreign policy. Covert operations ‘have increasingly tended to be less and less geared into what I understand to be the present overall strategy of the United States’ and have lacked ‘sufficient policy guidance and control’. According to Joyce, the ‘inevitable result’ was that ‘such activities, on occasion, are not in the national interest nor do they support our overall policy objectives’. Moreover, he claimed that the ‘role of covert operations in the conduct of foreign policy has been exaggerated’. Joyce believed that a much more realistic and level-headed attitude must prevail. Political warfare ‘can never “win the cold war”, but only make a modest but significant contribution’.

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Joyce also observed that many of Truman’s Cold Warriors were not taking stock of the disastrous record of CIA failures against the Soviet bloc. He warned that ‘there are still some officers within the CIA who have a feeling that intelligence operations abroad are an end in themselves and should be conducted independently of and without interference from policy-making and implementing American officials’. Joyce’s response to the notion that political warfare could be conducted without being tied into a strategy was blunt: ‘U.S. responsibility is such that amateurism, free-wheeling and heavyhandedness cannot be permitted in 1953.’ This was an extremely pessimistic and damning conclusion (although Joyce tried to claim otherwise in the paper), raised by the official who had been at the centre of the entire political warfare programme for its duration.116 US foreign policy was at a crossroads as Eisenhower took office. So too, it seemed, was the fate of the political warfare campaign against the Soviet bloc.

CHAPTER 6 ASSUMING THE MANTLE: THE EISENHOWER ADMINISTRATION AND THE SOVIET BLOC, 1953—6

The subjugation of Eastern Europe was an emotive subject that featured prominently among foreign policy debates during the 1952 presidential election campaign. There was a palpable sense of frustration among the American public that Truman’s containment policy was too passive and that the United States should do more to liberate the Soviet bloc from its communist masters. In one sense it was fair to criticise the Truman administration for adopting a negative policy towards the Soviet bloc. Washington had failed to develop a dynamic diplomatic strategy in the late 1940s (such as Kennan’s Program A) when the fluid international situation still offered the slight prospect of a negotiated resolution of US–Soviet differences. In another sense, the public’s perception of the Truman administration’s policy towards the Soviet bloc was misconceived. Nitze later remarked that ‘the evolution of our policy had outrun public understanding and support’.1 Under Truman, the objectives of the political warfare programme exceeded simply containing Soviet power to the East. The US government had expended considerable effort to try to roll back Soviet-communist power in Europe to traditional Russian boundaries. But US objectives in Eastern Europe

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had also outrun the capabilities employed to achieve them. The Truman administration’s failure to ‘liberate’ the Soviet bloc was fundamentally unrealistic without resorting to war. The US strategy was flawed so long as it was based on limited US political warfare capabilities. However, the commitment to seek liberation, at least on an aspirational level, was real, even though this was not fully appreciated by the American public in 1952. Misguided public perceptions of Truman’s policy towards the Soviet bloc were shaped to some degree, and certainly exploited, by Eisenhower’s election campaign team. Republicans were eager to make up for lost time in the political wilderness. The unexpected defeat of Republican presidential candidate Thomas Dewey to Truman in the November 1948 presidential election convinced many in the Republican Party (GOP) that more vociferous attacks must be made against the Democrats to gain maximum political advantage, bringing the curtain down on the post-war bipartisanship that had generally characterised US foreign relations after 1945. Prospective US Secretary of State John Foster Dulles in particular took up the cause with a grand mantra to overturn Truman’s ‘negative, futile and immoral’ and ‘treadmill policies’ in Eastern Europe and the Far East.2 The Republicans were able to tap into a groundswell of domestic discontent over Democratic foreign policy in the Cold War, which had been mounting steadily during Truman’s second term. Republican attacks were fuelled by the ‘shocks’ of 1949 – the Soviet acquisition of the atomic bomb, the ‘fall’ of China to communism and the trial of former State Department official Alger Hiss for perjury. Hiss’ subsequent conviction confirmed America’s worst fears about nefarious Soviet penetration into the very heart of the US government. Republicans blamed these events and the outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950 on a Democratic administration that was at best incompetent and at worst treacherous. McCarthyite suspicions of communist treachery in all walks of public and private life dominated Truman’s second term in office. Republicans linked the perceived shortcomings of Truman’s Soviet bloc policy to the purported failure of Franklin Roosevelt to secure the freedom of Eastern Europe during World War II. According to

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this view, Truman’s failure to liberate the Soviet bloc could be attributed to a long-running policy of appeasement (or worse still, a subversive pro-communist foreign policy) that stretched back to the secret concessions allegedly made by Roosevelt to Stalin at Yalta in February 1945.3 Of course this narrative conveniently ignored the total lack of capabilities or geopolitical influence to enable the US to impose its will on Stalin throughout this period. By 1952 Eisenhower and Dulles were therefore keen to take advantage of perceptions among the general public that Truman’s prosecution of the Cold War had been ineffective, and also to learn lessons from Dewey’s surprise 1948 election defeat. They were also aware that aggressive politicking could attract American voters of Eastern European descent, while a hard-line approach would appease the right-wing of the GOP, led by Robert Taft, who demanded tougher action against Soviet power.4 They energetically engaged in partisan politics by announcing that the Republicans had formulated a ‘more dynamic foreign policy which, by peaceful means, will endeavour to bring about the liberation of the enslaved peoples’.5 Although this statement hinted at a new strategy towards the Soviet bloc, there were immediate signs that the strategic question of feasibility was still being fudged by a concept that conflated the prospect of liberation achieved through peaceful measures. The reason for this was that Eisenhower became concerned by John Foster Dulles’ belligerent tone during campaigning, and insisted that he moderate his statements by emphasising that the US would seek to liberate the Soviet bloc through ‘all peaceful means’. Dulles obliged, and claimed that a Republican liberation policy would ‘activate the strains and stresses within the Communist empire so as to disintegrate it’. Dulles explained that he was not inciting ‘armed revolt’ in the satellites, because the ‘people have no arms and violent revolt would be futile; indeed it would be worse than futile, it would precipitate massacre’.6 Truman countered Republican attacks on his administration’s foreign policy during the 1952 election campaign by arguing that ‘nothing could be worse than to raise false hopes of [liberation] in Eastern Europe. Nothing could be worse than to incite uprisings that

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can only end by giving a new crop of victims to the Soviet executioners.’7 This ignored the emphasis within his own national security policies to stir up anti-communist and anti-Soviet unrest and to encourage nationalism and Titoism inside the Soviet bloc. It also once again raised the problem of how to resolve the contradiction between US aspirations and its limited capabilities. Despite Eisenhower’s rhetorical references to liberation during the 1952 presidential election, strategic ambiguity over whether Washington favoured liberation or peaceful alternatives endured after 1953. The new administration was compelled to revisit the troublesome quandary of Soviet bloc policy that had dogged its predecessor. Once in office, the Republicans also struggled to define a coherent strategy that sought to accomplish clear and realisable objectives. Several proponents of an offensive policy towards the Soviet bloc joined Eisenhower’s government in high-ranking executive positions early in 1953. John Foster Dulles was appointed US Secretary of State and his brother Allen became Director of Central Intelligence, succeeding Walter Bedell Smith (who moved to the post of Under Secretary of State). Other notable Cold Warriors included C. D. Jackson, who was appointed as the President’s Special Assistant for Psychological Warfare; Frank Wisner, who retained his post as Director of Covert Operations within the CIA and Robert Cutler, who became Eisenhower’s National Security Adviser. The activist composition of the new government and the Republican campaign platform suggested a tension between the aspiration to adopt a more decisive strategy and the practical restraints on such a course, including the determination to avoid war with the Soviet Union over Eastern Europe, which had frustrated the previous administration.

The Jackson Committee review of US covert operations Eisenhower entered the White House with a desire to reshape US foreign policy in his own image. His first step towards clarifying Soviet bloc policy was to order a review of American ‘information policies’ on 24 January 1953.8 The President’s Committee on International

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Information Activities was to be chaired by William H. Jackson and included proponents of an activist Soviet bloc policy, including C. D. Jackson, Robert Cutler and the frustrated first director of the Psychological Strategy Board Gordon Gray. The Jackson Committee interpreted its mandate broadly from Eisenhower, including an assessment of covert operations.9 The final report issued on 30 June was negative in its evaluation of the Truman administration’s attempts to reduce Soviet capabilities and retract Soviet power from Eastern Europe. The Jackson Committee questioned ‘whether these operations serve a useful purpose, whether they may be conducted more effectively with a view to making a greater contribution toward the achievement of national objectives, or whether they should be modified or abandoned’. Weaknesses in the present approach, rather than the delineation of unrealisable objectives through such limited capabilities, were identified as the core reason for the failure to roll back Soviet power under Truman. The Jackson Committee voiced concerns over the lack of ‘effective coordination’ between different departments and agencies within the US government. There had been ‘a serious gap between the formulation of general objectives and the detailed actions required to give effect to them’. Moreover, coordination and planning of ‘psychological operations’ had been undertaken ‘in the midst of ambiguity and serious interdepartmental controversy’.10 Some of the serious flaws that had hindered the effectiveness of the political warfare campaign in the Truman years were correctly identified in the Jackson Committee report. For instance, DCI Smith had on numerous occasions, most notably in his magnitude memorandum, called for greater logistical, administrative and policy support from the departments in order to assist the CIA’s execution of political warfare operations.11 It was also clear that bureaucratic feuding between the departments and the PSB had limited the latter’s ability to act as a strategic clearing house. But the Jackson Committee blamed these failings primarily on the establishment of the PSB. It was claimed that through the PSB mechanism the Truman administration had attempted to separate psychological warfare from all other components of US foreign policy. Therefore,

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a new interdepartmental body, the Operations Coordinating Board (OCB), should be set up to replace the PSB. According to the Jackson Committee, the OCB would embody ‘a group capable of assuring the coordinated execution of national security policies’.12 The report’s findings did not go to the heart of the matter by rigorously examining the incoherent strategy that underpinned US operations against the Soviet bloc. The lack of coordination and detailed policy guidance was an encumbrance, but it was not the principal shortcoming. Instead of addressing the key deficiency – that liberating Eastern Europe was hopelessly unrealistic through limited political warfare capabilities – the Jackson Committee’s recommendations made a scapegoat of the PSB. It was also unclear from these recommendations how the OCB would be able to surmount the same difficulties concerning the coordination of national policy that had restricted the PSB’s effectiveness.

Caution versus activism: The VFC, Stalin’s death and the East German riots During its first days in office, the Eisenhower administration signalled its intention to adopt a more aggressive approach to prosecuting the Cold War. On 19 February 1953, Eisenhower’s National Security Council discussed the creation of a Volunteer Freedom Corps (VFC). The idea was to overtly organise battalions of e´migre´ soldiers from the Eastern European nations under US military command. This proposal resurrected the Kersten Amendment of 1951, which had allocated US$100 million per year to e´migre´ resistance groups behind the iron curtain. The concept gained popularity in some quarters because it offered a cheap alternative to the mobilisation of US combat soldiers. It also held out the prospect that indigenous rather than American troops could be deployed to fight America’s wars in the Soviet bloc. But the JCS were apprehensive about reallocating vital military resources to e´migre´ groups, suggesting that ‘more good will be accomplished [. . .] by allowing the Kersten Amendment to lapse or at the most leaving it on the books with no actual implementation’.13 Many in the State Department also opposed the VFC because of the political

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ramifications for Washington of officially mobilising an e´migre´ army to wage Cold War. For instance, Charles Bohlen explained at a Jackson Committee hearing that it was unwise to overtly support the objective of liberation, something that the VFC did very publicly, if the US was not prepared to fully commit to its attainment by going to war with the Soviet Union: We all want to see Eastern Europe free. There is no difference of opinion on this. There is a difference of opinion, however, as to the wisdom of proclaiming this as a national objective. If we make such a proclamation we are in a real sense committing ourselves to bring it about. This is a responsibility which a truly great power accepts when it speaks. At some point the commitment to such an objective may come into conflict with some other commitment; for example, we do not intend to start a world war and this goal may conflict with the goal of liberation for Eastern Europe.14 Although Eisenhower established the VFC in May 1953 under NSC 143/2, its implementation was continually delayed.15 The initiative was eventually discarded in 1956 because of internal opposition and the objections of Washington’s Western European allies. Ultimately, the VFC was little more than a symbolic gesture of US opposition to Soviet domination over Eastern Europe. It certainly did not amount to an aggressive new approach to liberate the Soviet bloc. Several momentous events shook the foundations of Soviet power in Eastern Europe during the first six months of Eisenhower’s presidency. In particular, Stalin’s death and the outbreak of widespread rioting in East Germany seemingly provided rare opportunities for the US to exploit Russian vulnerabilities in the Soviet bloc. The bellicose campaign rhetoric of the Eisenhower team had promised the rigorous pursuit of liberation, but when it came to putting rhetoric into practice, American responses to these exposures of chinks in the Soviet armour were, like the VFC, limited to little more than symbolic gestures conveying American distaste of Soviet hegemony.

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When Stalin died on 5 March 1953 the Soviet regime felt ‘terribly vulnerable’ as Khrushchev later conceded.16 The Soviet leadership was exposed to internal and external pressures as it engaged in a secession struggle. American officials were uncertain about how to respond to this historic development in the Cold War. Instead of acting decisively to exploit this interim period of vulnerability inside the Kremlin after Stalin’s death, Eisenhower was left lamenting the lack of a clear strategic plan: Ever since 1946, I know that all the so-called experts have been yapping about what would happen when Stalin dies and what we as a nation, should do about it. Well, he’s dead. And you can turn the files of our government inside out – in vain – looking for any plans laid. We have no plan. We are not even sure what difference his death makes.17 Eisenhower was actually wrong to claim there was no American plan drawn up for the event of Stalin’s death. Contingency plans had been drafted under Truman in PSB D-24, ‘Psychological Operations Plan for the Exploitation of Stalin’s Passing from Power’.18 Furthermore, there were some within the US government who were keen to exploit Stalin’s passing away. The PSB argued that the Soviet dictator’s demise represented the ‘most far reaching opportunity’ to improve the US position in the ‘world struggle’ against the Kremlin.19 Cold War activists, including C. D. Jackson and Harold Stassen along with prominent private consultants such as Walt Rostow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, agreed with the PSB’s assessment, and hoped that the Eisenhower administration would now aggressively exert pressure on the post-Stalin regime as it attempted to consolidate its authority. Jackson and Rostow hastily drew up offensive psychological warfare plans to take advantage of the sudden weakness at the heart of the Soviet regime.20 But all aggressive initiatives were rebuffed by the State Department. John Foster Dulles advised Eisenhower to adopt a moderate stance to avoid aggravating what was a delicate and potentially volatile political situation in the USSR, rather than endorse provocative operations to probe Moscow’s

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present vulnerabilities. Dulles had not abandoned the long-term ideological goal of liberation, arguing at a NSC meeting in late March that the US should ‘keep our pressures on, psychological and otherwise’ in order to induce ‘the disintegration of Soviet power’. He also counselled against the execution of aggressive psychological and political warfare measures to undermine the Kremlin’s grip on the Soviet bloc, at least until the dust had settled in the wake of Stalin’s passing.21 The State Department’s caution was arguably the wisest course, but it fuelled indecision within the government, negating an immediate reaction. In the end, Eisenhower’s official response, a highprofile speech entitled ‘Chance for Peace’, was made six weeks after Stalin’s death. The speech underwent 12 drafts before the final version was publically delivered by Eisenhower on 16 April 1953. This delay was indicative of the reluctance pervading the highest levels of the administration to commit decisively to a response to the Soviet autocrat’s death.22 Moreover, when ‘Chance for Peace’ was finally delivered it was primarily crafted to win the worldwide publicrelations battle against the Kremlin, rather than broker reconciliatory talks with the new Soviet leadership that emerged after Stalin. Like later high-profile speeches given by Eisenhower, such as ‘Atoms for Peace’ and ‘Open Skies’, ‘Chance for Peace’ was more a carefully crafted psychological warfare initiative designed to win over international opinion than a genuine diplomatic initiative to pursue de´tente.23 ‘Chance for Peace’ was also designed to repel Georgy Malenkov’s ‘peace initiative’. At Stalin’s funeral, the emerging successor Malenkov had declared that ‘there are no contested issues in US – Soviet relations that cannot be resolved by peaceful means’. The US government sceptically regarded this pronouncement as a ‘peace offensive’ rather than a ‘peace initiative’. Reconciliatory Soviet overtures were seen as part of a clever strategy to scupper Western military integration just as the European Defence Community was being debated by Western Europe’s parliaments.24 An analysis of Soviet peace feelers produced by the PSB warned that ‘it should be borne in mind that in communist doctrine the “peace offensive” and “truce talks” are both considered to be interim measures to

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achieve a lessening of enemy pressure while communist resources are consolidated’.25 Therefore, although Eisenhower declared that ‘Chance for Peace’ marked a ‘serious bid for peace’, his speechwriters focused on portraying to the world that the Kremlin was the sole obstacle to world peace and that Soviet peace gestures were insincere. The problem with this was that it also meant the American counterproposal to negotiate was disingenuous. Eisenhower declared his willingness to enter into serious disarmament discussions with Moscow, but the Soviets must first display good faith by reaching settlements in Korea, Germany and Austria. The post-Stalin regime must also cease Soviet involvement in Indochina and Malaya, and relinquish control over Eastern Europe. These conditions were attached as prerequisites before the US would consider entering into negotiations. Of course the Eisenhower camp was fully aware that it was unthinkable for a Soviet regime to unilaterally concede on so many important issues prior to formal negotiations. The real intention of ‘Chance for Peace’ was to put the Soviet peace initiative on the back foot. The Soviets would be compelled to reject Eisenhower’s terms, creating the outward appearance that Moscow, not Washington, was obstructing the path to de´tente. In the weeks after Eisenhower gave the ‘Chance for Peace’ speech it was translated into 45 different languages and broadcasted widely over radio and television networks throughout the West. It was also transmitted into the Soviet bloc by Voice of America and Radio Free Europe and was distributed on a global scale through press releases and the production of over 3 million leaflets.26 The PSB, glowing at the widespread exposure that had been achieved, described this monumental effort to publicise ‘Chance for Peace’ as a ‘counteroffensive’ to the Soviet ‘peace offensive’.27 Despite the success of ‘Chance for Peace’ as a public-relations exercise, it actually embodied a defensive strategy. It betrayed an acute sense of anxiety that the US was losing the propaganda war to the Soviets. Not only was it a defensive measure, it also amounted to a rejection of serious negotiations to overcome the political deadlock in Europe and a failure to consider the opportunity to

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move away from the militarisation of the Cold War. Although the extent to which the Kremlin would have made serious political concessions after Stalin’s death is moot, the US missed a real chance to at least test the water in the interim post-Stalin period during which Malenkov sought to establish his authority. It is highly unlikely that peace talks could have produced an immediate negotiated withdrawal of Soviet power from the Eastern bloc. But some progress might have been made in Central Europe – in Austria and Germany – fostering a more tolerant open international climate that would soften Moscow’s hegemonic control over Eastern Europe. Charles Bohlen later expressed his regret that he had not done more to persuade Eisenhower to open talks with Malenkov at this time.28 Rather than enter into discussions and raise the possibility of de´tente, Eisenhower preferred to continue to develop preponderant American power through the route of Western integration and the rearmament of West Germany. This course was ultimately counterproductive in the sense that it compelled Moscow to respond defensively to secure its national security. Official US policy papers recognised that the escalatory reaction in the Kremlin to the American strategy culminated in the founding of the Warsaw Pact in May 1955 as a military counterweight to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.29 Eisenhower was initially indecisive and then defensive in his response to Stalin’s death. Further developments inside the Soviet bloc appeared to American Cold War activists to provide additional opportunities to weaken the Soviet grasp on its satellites. In late May 1953 disturbances broke out in Bulgaria and Czechoslovakia. Then in June more serious unrest erupted in East Germany. Malenkov’s conciliatory pronouncements seemed to imply that a greater degree of independence among the satellites would now be tolerated by Moscow. Yet this jarred with the experience in East Germany, where the Soviets and the Communist Socialist Unity Party (SED) under Walter Ulbricht were accelerating the Sovietisation of the country under the ‘New Course’ programme.30 Several hundred East Berlin construction workers staged a demonstration on 16 June calling for a general strike, turning into wider anti-government protests across the German Democratic

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Republic (GDR) the following day. The protests rapidly descended into riots, which were quickly put down by Soviet military force.31 The US government was taken by surprise by the outbreak of violent disorder across the GDR. Again Eisenhower was uncertain how to respond to a clear manifestation of weakness and dissent in the Soviet bloc.32 A swift reaction was hindered by a lack of intelligence on the fluid developments inside the GDR. But, more importantly, vacillation reflected the lack of a clear plan – and this was symptomatic of Washington’s wider strategic failings towards the Soviet bloc. Eisenhower and his advisors wanted to exploit the unrest in East Germany, but no one had a clear idea about how to do this. American Cold Warriors suggested arming the East German insurgents, but notions of an aggressive response were shackled by Eisenhower. A limited supply of American weapons to nationalists behind the iron curtain would only be considered if a revolt was deemed to have ‘a real chance of success’.33 Eisenhower quickly concluded that the uprising in the GDR would easily be put down by Soviet military forces, so the US should not intervene provocatively. Although the US government was not willing to directly intervene to assist the East German dissidents – because this would risk provoking a Third World War – Washington did attempt to fan the flames of popular discontent. According to later State Department assessments, US anti-communist propaganda through Radio in the American Sector played a ‘major role’ in spreading the initial unrest in East Berlin into the rest of the GDR.34 American propaganda was an effective mouthpiece for voicing widespread public dissatisfaction with the communist rulers and Soviet domination. This action was counterproductive, however, because the spreading revolt was subsequently crushed by Soviet troops. Once the revolt had been put down, Washington set up food kitchens in West Berlin for the GDR’s hungry. Again, this was a public-relations success for the US in its propaganda battle with the USSR. It also gave a timely boost to West Germany’s Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, contributing to his election success in September 1953 and popularising his policy of ‘Westintegration’.35 In reality, the food aid programme was little more than a face-saving exercise

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for Eisenhower, which papered over America’s impotence to exploit and harness popular dissent within the GDR in order to roll back the Soviets. Interim US policy was drawn up in NSC 158 one week after the GDR riots. In light of recent events, the NSC stressed that ‘more emphasis [should] be placed on passive resistance’. This language was indicative of a cautious policy towards the Soviet bloc, and reflected the American restraint that had characterised Eisenhower’s response both to Stalin’s death and the East German revolt. But the goal of liberation continued to burn brightly. It was recommended that as a first step the US should ‘nourish resistance to communist oppression throughout satellite Europe, short of mass rebellion’.36 NSC 158 left it unclear how to avoid a repetition of the East German experience in employing psychological warfare behind the iron curtain. It was evident that US propaganda was extremely effective at intensifying anti-communist sentiment in the Soviet bloc, but the US would need to ensure that it could control the tipping point between passive and active resistance if it hoped to avoid further futile bloodshed at the hands of Soviet troops. The graphic demonstration of American impotence during the East German uprising in the summer of 1953 struck a blow to proponents of political warfare. The US Chiefs of Mission to the Eastern European countries were firm in their belief that lessons should be learned. Their view was that the US ‘should never consider that Eastern Europe can be liberated by political warfare devices no matter how well planned and energetic they may be’. This point jarred with the Jackson Committee’s findings that psychological– political warfare against the Soviet bloc had failed because of poor coordination and planning. The Chiefs of Mission were certainly not calling for the abandonment of the ultimate goal of liberation, just a more moderate approach towards its accomplishment. The covert campaign should be strictly limited to ‘assist in this spirit [of resistance] but should never incite [the satellite populations] to rebellion or revolts’.37 The Eisenhower government now appeared to endorse a policy that would attempt to tread a fine line between fostering passive resistance and inciting rebellion.

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NSC 162/2: Eisenhower’s ‘New Look’ foreign policy Eisenhower’s uncertain response to the East German uprising was partially because his administration had not yet drafted a comprehensive national security strategy for the Cold War to replace Truman’s policy under NSC 68. When the disturbances broke out in the GDR, the Eisenhower administration was in the middle of an extensive policy review called Project Solarium. Initiated by Eisenhower in May 1953, Project Solarium was divided into three task forces that were each charged to study an alternative approach to national security strategy. Task Force A was directed to investigate a continuation of the present foreign policy. Task Force B was to look at a strict containment policy by examining ways to draw a figurative line in the sand beyond which it would be made clear to Moscow that war would be provoked. Task Force C was instructed to consider the development of a more dynamic and aggressive strategy to create a climate of victory and reduce Soviet power in the Cold War struggle.38 Solarium continued throughout the summer months of 1953, culminating in Eisenhower’s approval of a new policy directive entitled NSC 162/2 on 30 October. It was branded a ‘New Look’ for US foreign policy. In truth, NSC 162/2 offered nothing new for US policy towards the Soviet bloc on a strategic level. The New Look emphasised a reliance on methods to contain Soviet expansion, including sanctioning a prominent place for nuclear weapons in US foreign policy. This was because Eisenhower’s ‘Basic National Security Strategy’ was drafted with one eye on the inevitable development of a Soviet hydrogen bomb. The new directive therefore emphasised defensive strategies such as ‘massive nuclear deterrence’ and ‘collective security’ rather than the offensive political warfare campaign to roll back Soviet power that had been examined by Task Force C. The high-level debates during the drafting of NSC 162/2 concentrated on bringing down the bloated defence budget that had resulted from the implementation of NSC 68 during the Korean War. Eisenhower’s priority was to reduce the inflated levels of defence spending now that the Korean War had ended. This would facilitate

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domestic tax cuts while maintaining the defensive strength of the Western world.39 The spotlight was not on how to liberate the Soviet bloc from communism – or even clarifying whether this was a US policy aim – even though Project Solarium had broached these issues. Therefore, the adoption of NSC 162/2 did not decisively resolve the question of US strategies and goals in the Cold War. The pursuit of roll back was not explicitly ruled out in the new directive, but emphasis was placed on other aspects of US national security strategy favouring containment through nuclear deterrence. The problem was that the alternative strategies considered during the Solarium exercise could not be reconciled. A policy of containment was not compatible with an aggressive liberation programme. Given that the development of a strategy to unify these two elements was unfeasible, it stood to reason that either containment or liberation must be rejected in order to clarify one consistent course of action in the Cold War. PPS Director Robert Bowie believed that the ‘new look’ foreign policy did just this, that Eisenhower’s ‘purpose was to make sure that everyone understood that the basic policy was containment and not roll-back’.40 NSC 162/2 clearly emphasised containment, and in this sense it marked a shift away from rollback and the alarmist ideological fervour that had punctuated NSC 68. However, Eisenhower did not explicitly rule out one approach in favour of the other, leaving the door ajar for Cold Warriors to pursue a limited version of rollback in the East. As a result, the strategy for liberating the Soviet bloc remained ambiguous. The issue of how to liberate Eastern Europe was not even broached within NSC 162/2, given the emphasis on alliances and nuclear deterrence. But Eisenhower’s NSC did sanction undertaking ‘feasible political, economic, propaganda and covert measures to create and exploit troublesome problems for the USSR [to] complicate control in the satellites, and retard the growth of the military and economic potential of the Soviet bloc’.41 Although this type of activity related to efforts to undermine rather than overthrow communist regimes in the Soviet bloc, no differentiation of these goals was included. Moreover, the JCS still favoured a ‘positive, dynamic policy’ towards the Soviet bloc, including preparatory

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political warfare operations for a hot war. Pressure from the military secured Eisenhower’s concurrence that rollback should not be explicitly rejected. As a result, a paragraph written by the State Department prohibiting the US from initiating ‘aggressive actions involving force against Soviet bloc territory’ was omitted from the final document.42 Therefore, even though the US government officially recognised that the ‘detachment of any major European satellite from the Soviet bloc does not now appear feasible except by Soviet acquiescence or by war’, it remained permissible following the implementation of NSC 162/2 to undertake psychological and political warfare operations aimed at retracting Soviet power from Eastern Europe.43

The OCB and the development of US policy Although the New Look did not provide answers regarding Soviet bloc policy, the Jackson Committee had been confident at the beginning of Eisenhower’s presidency that the creation of a new body to replace the ineffective PSB would ameliorate problems with the execution of US political and psychological warfare programmes. On 2 September 1953 Eisenhower formally established the Operations Coordinating Board through Executive Order 10483, marking the downfall of the PSB, as recommended previously by Jackson. The OCB was charged by the president to perform several functions: to advise government agencies on operational planning responsibilities, to facilitate interdepartmental coordination and implementation of plans, to ensure that all operations were consistent with national security objectives and to develop new plans as opportunities arose.44 Eisenhower also secretly authorised the OCB to continue to perform the PSB’s role of coordinating and evaluating major political warfare projects under NSC 10/5.45 There was not much change to the bureaucratic management of political warfare under Eisenhower, despite the cancellation of the PSB and creation of the OCB in its place. Initially the 10/2 consultants group providing the CIA with policy guidance was abolished, but this decision was reversed at the OCB’s first meeting in mid-September 1953.

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A panel of representatives of the Departments of State and Defense and the CIA would continue to handle political warfare matters, and this group would now be chaired by the Cold War activist C. D. Jackson, Eisenhower’s special assistant for psychological warfare and Cold War.46 The lack of a coordinated strategy between containment and rollback, and the fact that Cold Warriors such as C. D. Jackson, Frank Wisner and Allen Dulles were positioned at the heart of policy coordination and implementation, meant that the anti-communist political warfare campaign against the Soviet bloc lived on even as the main thrust of US foreign policy went in a different direction. Increasingly, the administration would turn to psychological warfare operations to try ‘to keep the pot simmering’ behind the iron curtain, as Wisner put it, ‘but to avoid boiling it over’ into outright rebellion.47 For instance, American-sponsored anti-communist e´migre´ groups continued to expand their propaganda operations after NSC 162/2 had been approved. RFE unleashed two waves of psychological warfare through intensive broadcasting and leaflet drops, haranguing the Czech leadership under operations ‘Prospero’ and ‘VETO’ in 1953. The next year Hungary was targeted by ‘Operation FOCUS’, demanding economic reforms and democratic elections of the communist regime in Budapest. New and more powerful transmitters were added to enhance these American-instigated psychological warfare campaigns. By 1954 RFE was broadcasting anti-communist propaganda almost 24 hours a day into Eastern Europe in order to undermine the regimes and foster nationalist antiSoviet sentiment among the local populations. Yet this reflected a shift away from the more aggressive political warfare operations undertaken during Truman’s incumbency. Nevertheless, confusion over US objectives towards the Soviet bloc still prevailed within the Eisenhower administration after NSC 162/2 had been approved. In early 1954 Frank Wisner, who continued to lead the CIA’s Directorate of Plans, angrily denounced proponents of a more strident anti-Soviet campaign: I have never understood how it is possible to support from outside a satellite country a revolt or unrest of any kind which is

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not sufficiently strong, in and of itself, to unseat the government in power. This support can only be provided by armed military forces prepared to march to the active assistance of the revolutionists for the purpose of helping them complete their attempted coup and providing the strength necessary to consolidate and hold their gains. To the best of my knowledge there is no historical precedent for a successful revolt in a country where the weight of a large army of a foreign power, supporting the existing regime, is either in the country or standing on its borders ready to move. Nor is it my understanding that there is any US policy decision in being, nor any adequate US forces to back up any such decision, to move in and give support to an attempted revolt.48 The tone of Wisner’s remarks belied his frustration with the OPC’s failed attempts to foster long-term underground resistance movements in Albania, Poland, Ukraine and elsewhere. It is also clear from Wisner’s comments that the fine line drawn between resistance and rebellion since the East German uprising was not fully appreciated by everyone in Washington. Referring to C. D. Jackson – chairman of the OCB consultants panel – Wisner warned that the ‘lack of understanding at higher governmental levels’ of US policy towards the Soviet bloc was ‘a very serious matter’. Furthermore, ‘the minds of those who believe we are all set to go, or are in the process of developing plans to touch off or support uprisings in the satellites’ must, he said, urgently be disabused of such notions.49 Evidently Jackson, who was personally and professionally close to Eisenhower and sat at the crux of the political warfare machinery, had not been availed of the lessons from the East German rebellion. Jackson was still pushing hard for rollback operations when these had generally been put aside by the administration. The East German episode, the formulation of a new policy under NSC 162/2, and the replacement of Truman’s political warfare machinery with the OCB had all failed to produce an explicit rejection of the liberation agenda. In fact, the OCB explicitly acknowledged in mid-1954 that ‘NSC 162/2 does not direct the abandonment of current operating policies and programs [against

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the Soviet bloc] whether overt or covert’.50 But none of Eisenhower’s Cold Warriors had been able to clarify how they expected to liberate the Soviet bloc without taking the US into war. Ambiguity over US aims towards the Soviet bloc could have been resolved by the next policy paper to be issued by the NSC relating directly to that region. NSC 174 ‘United States Policy toward the Soviet Satellites in Eastern Europe’ was approved in December 1953 and superseded the interim directive NSC 158 that had been quickly drafted in the immediate aftermath of the East German uprising. Although by the end of the year Washington had had time to digest the events of the previous summer, the recommendations set out in NSC 174 still failed to explicitly abandon rollback as an objective of US policy. The NSC reiterated the unlikelihood of a satellite breaking away from the Soviet bloc without going to war with the USSR, as had been asserted in NSC 162/2 and numerous intelligence estimates.51 Military intervention by the US to vanquish communist power in Eastern Europe also continued to be categorically dismissed as a feasible option at the policy level. Instead, diplomatic, economic, propaganda and covert pressure would be brought to bear ‘to maintain the morale of anti-Soviet elements, to sow confusion and discredit the authority of the regimes, to disrupt Soviet-satellite relationships, and generally to maximise Soviet difficulties’. According to the NSC, the ultimate aim of these measures was still the ‘eventual elimination’ of Soviet power, but the caveats attached to this objective made it completely unfeasible. The US would continue ‘to encourage anti-Soviet elements in the satellites and keep up their hopes’, but the US was not prepared to intervene militarily. Stung by American impotence to assist the East German rebels, the authors of NSC 174 warned that Washington must ‘not encourage premature action on their part which will bring upon them further terror and suppression’. US policy now awkwardly plotted a middle path between outright support of liberation and the official abandonment of it as an ideological aspiration. US policy would walk the tightrope of encouraging passive anti-Soviet resistance in Eastern Europe on the condition that it must not turn active. According to the analysis

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given in NSC 174, ‘continuing and careful attention must be given to the fine line, which is not stationary, between exhortations to keep up morale and to maintain passive resistance, and invitations to suicide’.52 Another of the middle-course strategies, the encouragement of ‘heretical communism’ was also reviewed in NSC 174. The latest directive indicated a continued shift away from the Titoist policy enshrined in NSC 58/2. It was acknowledged in NSC 174 that it was extremely unlikely that a ‘satellite communist regime would or could break away from Moscow under its own power’.53 Confusingly though, two months later policy guidance specifically relating to Yugoslavia issued in NSC 5406/1 still endorsed fostering links with Belgrade, because ‘[p]olitically and psychologically, the “Tito heresy” has provided the West with an important asset’. Although the evidence refuted that another Tito could possibly emerge to defy Moscow’s will, and despite the fact that it remained unproven that Tito’s survival would have any bearing on the long-term American objective to retract communist power from the Eastern bloc, according to this report it was still ‘in the security interest of the United States to support Yugoslavia’.54 The Tito conundrum for US policymakers was that although he was ‘our enemy’s enemy’ he also remained an ideological adversary of the West. A lack of capabilities to pursue alternative courses determined continued American support to Tito. But the advisability of this affiliation in furtherance of US interests was made even more uncertain when the Kremlin initiated efforts to rebuild its relations with Belgrade, beginning in August 1954, leading to a senior delegation of Soviet officials including Nikita Khrushchev, Anastas Mikoyan and Nikolai Bulganin visiting the Yugoslav capital the following summer. The culmination of that trip was Khrushchev’s pronouncement that there were ‘different forms of socialism’.55 Nevertheless, Dulles and Eisenhower continued to nurture a working relationship with the Yugoslav dictator that included the delivery of American military aid to Yugoslavia, because this course seemed preferable to one that was completely idle. A relationship with Belgrade was also justified because American diplomats regarded

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Soviet efforts to seek a rapprochement with Tito as a defensive measure that betrayed Moscow’s sense of insecurity over its control of the satellite region.56 A shake-up of US policy towards the Soviet bloc was desperately required by 1954 to resolve the confusion over exhortations of passive resistance, national communism and rollback. In a progress report on NSC 174 disseminated in July 1954, the OCB bemoaned the fact that the ‘effective implementation’ of operations in the Soviet bloc ‘is inhibited by the cautions and limitations written into [NSC 174]’. But the OCB also acknowledged the contradictions that made a mockery of the present strategy: [T]he objective is to restore freedom and roll back Soviet power in the satellites, but at the same time to avoid provoking war with the USSR, to ease international tensions, cooperate with our allies and avoid premature revolt.57 In fact, John Foster Dulles at the State Department was now unashamedly disinterested in the goal of liberation. In light of the probable Soviet acquisition of thermo-nuclear weapons, plus the intercontinental ballistic missile delivery systems that would make the continental US vulnerable to a Soviet first strike nuclear attack, Dulles now argued that liberation ‘in itself would not touch the heart of the problem: Soviet atomic plenty’. According to the US Secretary of State, even ‘if we split the Soviet bloc [. . .] we would still have to face the terrible problem and threat of an unimpaired nuclear capability in the USSR itself’. The blunt truth was that the fate of Eastern Europe was peripheral to US national security. Therefore, the US ‘should forego actions which would generally be regarded as provocative’.58 In reality, the Sovietisation of Eastern Europe had always been a marginal concern for US national security. The initial fear had now receded that Soviet control of the East would provide a springboard for the military and/or political expansion of communism into the West. But that anxiety was replaced with an even greater concern, that provocative US interference in the Soviet sphere of influence

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could unintentionally spark a devastating nuclear conflict between the superpowers.

Reaffirmation of political warfare: the NSC 5412 series and Doolittle Report By the mid-1950s US national security priorities were based on building up Western military, economic and political cohesion and strength, and deterring Soviet expansion through nuclear deterrence, but the CIA’s mandate providing for the continuance of political warfare operations was not withdrawn. On the contrary, the CIA’s responsibility to undertake covert operations under the authority of NSC 10/2 and NSC 10/5 was reaffirmed with the approval of NSC 5412 in March 1954. Within this paper, the need to supplement overt with covert activities to combat international communism was reaffirmed, as was the CIA’s responsibility to undertake these operations along with espionage and counter-espionage. CIA covert operations would be undertaken with a range of objectives in mind. They should aim to ‘[c]reate and exploit troublesome problems for International Communism’ and ‘impair relations between the USSR [. . .] and their satellites’. They should also ‘[d]iscredit the prestige and ideology of International Communism’ and undermine communist influence in any area of the ‘free world’. Finally, the military’s desire for the CIA to develop ‘underground resistance and facilitate covert and guerrilla operations’ behind the iron curtain was explicitly authorised in NSC 5412.59 The rationale behind these quasi-military actions was that they were necessary to prepare the resistance potential of the Eastern European populations for activation in the event of a hot war with the Soviet Union. But several US government officials who had been intimately involved with political warfare – Smith, Wisner, Lindsay and Joyce, to name but a few – had already expressed concerns about the feasibility and advisability of such operations while the US and Soviet Union were still only engaged in a Cold War. The OCB was also well aware of the strategic dilemma that bedevilled the US political warfare programme. A working group analysis that was approved by the board in September 1954 noted the

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‘undesirability of provoking the liquidation of important resistance movements or creating false hopes of U.S. intervention’. Moreover, although the US objective of reducing the strength of international communism had been asserted in directives such as NSC 162/2 and NSC 174, these papers did not ‘provide specific policy guidelines’ to the CIA.60 Strategic guidance was vitally needed to explain to the CIA how political warfare operations could avoid inciting revolution behind the iron curtain while fostering passive resistance against the ruling communist regimes. This uncertainty was not put to rest by NSC 5412, although restraints continued to be imposed on political warfare projects. Most importantly, covert operations must be developed ‘in the light of U.S. and Soviet capabilities and taking into account the risk of war’.61 In practice Washington did not possess or was not willing to employ the necessary capabilities to liberate the Soviet bloc. It was clear after the East German uprising that Moscow was willing to take military action to protect its client regimes in the satellites, and therefore any major US rollback operation would inherently risk sparking war. But no specific analysis of the strategic restraints on political warfare had ever been written into a covert operations charter. This meant that the sanction and its limitations remained open to interpretation by CIA activists as political warfare projects were being developed within the Directorate of Plans. It was also confirmed in NSC 5412 that the CIA would continue to receive policy guidance from the 10/2 consultants and that the DCI should also consult and obtain advice from the OCB. Because the sanction to undertake political warfare against the Soviet bloc was still open to flexible interpretation by planners and practitioners, it was absolutely essential that the management and oversight machinery worked effectively. The authority to undertake covert political warfare behind the iron curtain was reasserted by Eisenhower in 1955. Effort was made to hone the machinery to oversee the programme and provide policy guidance. Approved in March 1955, NSC 5412/1 placed responsibility for coordinating covert operations in a Planning Coordination Group (PCG) chaired by Nelson A. Rockefeller.62

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Budget Director Rowland Hughes had recommended to Eisenhower that the PCG should be established to strengthen the coordination of US economic, psychological and political warfare, and foreign information activities. Yet by December 1955 the PCG reported to the president that it was incapable of performing this coordinating role.63 As a result Eisenhower approved NSC 5412/2, establishing a more authoritative group comprising representatives of the US President, Secretary of State and Secretary of Defense to replace the PCG. This new executive body, which in Eisenhower’s second term became known as the ‘5412 Committee’ or ‘Special Group’, was expected to ensure that covert political warfare operations were coordinated and consistent with US foreign policy objectives.64 The machinery for coordinating political warfare programmes was retained by Eisenhower’s successors as the ‘Special Group (Counterinsurgency)’ under President Kennedy, the ‘303 Committee’ under Johnson and the ‘40 Committee’ under Nixon. Cold War activists were given a further boost in September 1954 when an official report chartered by Eisenhower vigorously endorsed the role played by political warfare in US foreign policy, despite the fact that strategic ambiguity prevailed in terms of its feasibility and desirability. In July 1954 Eisenhower instructed General James Doolittle to chair a review panel to ‘undertake a comprehensive study of the covert activities of the Central Intelligence Agency’, including ‘the personnel factors, the security, the adequacy, the efficacy and the relative costs of these operations and, as far as possible, equate the cost of the over-all efforts to the results achieved’. Eisenhower’s motivation to review secret intelligence and covert operations was based more on trying to audit the American clandestine service in order to streamline the CIA’s cost-effectiveness and efficiency. This was consistent with the agenda to bring down government spending on national security that had influenced NSC 162/2. Notwithstanding his desire to cut costs where possible, the President impressed upon Doolittle that he considered the CIA’s role to be essential in the Cold War. According to Eisenhower, ‘these operations are essential to our national security in these days when international Communism is aggressively pressing its worldwide subversive program’.65

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The Doolittle study of US covert operations was completed and submitted to Eisenhower on 30 September 1954. Doolittle’s Special Study Group was not tasked with questioning the strategic basis for carrying out political warfare operations in the Soviet bloc. Instead the report was focused on organisational issues. The review team asserted that ‘an aggressive covert psychological, political and paramilitary organization more effective, more unique and, if necessary, more ruthless than that employed by the enemy’ was an ‘important requirement’ for the US in the Cold War. Doolittle portrayed the world situation faced by the US in stark terms and in language that was reminiscent of NSC 68: It is now clear that we are facing an implacable enemy whose avowed objective is world domination by whatever means and at whatever cost. There are no rules in such a game. Hitherto acceptable norms of human conduct do not apply. If the United States is to survive, long-standing American concepts of ‘fair play’ must be reconsidered. We must develop effective espionage and counterespionage services and must learn to subvert, sabotage and destroy our enemies by more clever, more sophisticated and more effective methods than those used against us. It may become necessary that the American people be made acquainted with, understand and support this fundamentally repugnant philosophy.66 The bulk of the sections covering covert operations in the Doolittle Report related to the effectiveness of coordination, implementation, auditing and departmental support for the CIA’s political warfare programme. The question of strategy went beyond the Special Study Group’s remit and this aspect was not therefore considered. So the Doolittle group concluded that the key to the effectiveness of the political warfare programme lay in its organisational setup. According to the report, the ‘success of the covert operations of C.I.A. depends upon how efficiently they are conducted and how well they are coordinated with other agencies of the Government’. The report’s authors, having spent two months discussing the

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organisational problems that hindered its work with CIA officials, unsurprisingly took a sympathetic view of its development as an institution, noting that the Agency ‘has suffered from a mixed inheritance, a lack of policy continuity, tremendous pressures to accept commitments beyond its capacity to perform, and a mushroom expansion’. Organisational factors had also been central to the problems identified by the Jackson Committee a year before the Doolittle Report. Yet although bureaucratic wrangling and duplication of effort were often serious problems that undermined the effective implementation of covert operations, Eisenhower’s reviews all concentrated solely on the organisational aspect of the political warfare programme. This diverted attention away from the more fundamental question of whether or not the accomplishment of US objectives in the Soviet bloc through political warfare was strategically feasible. Jackson and Doolittle had highlighted problems in the execution of operations, but there was no policylevel review of the nature of political warfare activities to assess whether US objectives towards the Soviet bloc were realistic. After all, the effective management of covert operations would not be the determining factor in the successful outcome of objectives if the aims were unachievable through these methods. This point was not grasped by those at the centre of American foreign policy in the mid-1950s. As CIA Director, Allen Dulles had a vested interest in protecting the Agency from criticism and bureaucratic obstructionism. Dulles therefore understandably blamed the poor record of US covert operations against the Soviet bloc on administrative factors. In a paper disseminated to the NSC in November 1954 he admitted that ‘there are shortcomings in our counter-subversive effort which could be overcome’. For Dulles, these failings could be ascribed to the US government’s inability to develop ‘the coordination, flexibility, and decisiveness in resolving internal differences that would make possible the utilization with maximum effect of all the assets which the US does possess’. Although he did not think the failings of the political warfare campaign could be resolved ‘merely by the creation of additional administrative

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machinery’, in Dulles’ view it was still an organisational rather than strategic problem that was the root cause of any failings.67 At a NSC meeting six days later, John Foster Dulles agreed with his brother, blaming the ineffectiveness of US covert operations against the Soviet bloc on the machinery, coordination and management of political warfare, rather than strategic flaws. The Secretary of State urged the NSC to support DCI Dulles’ calls for ‘more effective organization for this area of activity’. In his view, the failure to achieve results in the subversive field was primarily the result of ‘our failure to create an organization for the effective conduct of subversive and counter-subversive operations against the enemy’.68 Although John Foster Dulles was a sympathetic fraternal observer of the administrative challenges that complicated the CIA’s effectiveness, he was also guilty of sending out inconsistent signals concerning the use of more aggressive operations in US foreign policy. During a review of US basic national security policy conducted in December 1954, Secretary Dulles expressed sympathy for the desire vocalised by the JCS ‘in favor of greater dynamism in the American attitude toward the Soviet Union and Communist China’. Dulles conceded that previously he ‘had himself called for a more dynamic U.S. policy vis-a`-vis Communism’. But according to Dulles, Washington needed to accept that ‘experience indicated that it was not easy to go very much beyond the point that this Administration had reached in translating a dynamic policy into courses of action’. The Cold War hawks in the Eisenhower administration were lobbying ‘for an effort to overthrow the Communist regimes in China and in the European satellites and to detach these countries from the USSR’. But if they got their way, then this ‘would involve the United States in general war’ – and direct military conflict had been ruled out as a policy option in the nuclear age. Dulles expanded on this line of reasoning to reveal that he had completely reversed his previous hard-line stance on US Soviet bloc policy. Dulles now recognised that the retraction of Soviet power from Eastern Europe ‘in itself would not actually touch the heart of the problem’. According to Dulles, this was in fact ‘Soviet atomic plenty’. Should the US even be capable of peacefully rolling back the

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iron curtain, ‘we would still have to face the terrible problem and threat of an unimpaired nuclear capability in the USSR itself’. Furthermore, although ‘these more aggressive policies, if successful, might result in the disintegration of the Soviet bloc’, the destructive scale of the effort required to do so would fatally undermine the cohesion of the ‘free world bloc’. Having carefully weighed up all of these considerations Dulles felt compelled to conclude that ‘this kind of aggressive policy was not in the best interests of the United States’.69 This was an astonishing admission from Dulles, who had previously been such an ardent champion of an aggressive hard-line foreign policy to vanquish communism throughout the world. But Dulles’ reasoning was faultless on the point that core US national security interests were now tied into nuclear security. The development of Soviet heavy bombers and the intercontinental ballistic missile programme during the 1950s meant that the USSR was rapidly developing the capability to deliver a devastating nuclear assault against the continental US. A report submitted to Eisenhower early in 1956 gave a bleak assessment of the consequences of a nuclear conflict between the US and the Soviet Union. Because Washington possessed larger stockpiles of nuclear weapons and superior delivery capabilities, the damage against the Soviet Union would be threefold that inflicted against the US. Even still, in the aftermath of a surprise nuclear first strike by the Soviets, it ‘would literally be a business of digging ourselves out of ashes, starting again’.70 Because of the terrible consequences of a nuclear war, it was completely inconceivable that the US would be prepared to challenge Soviet power in Eastern Europe. US policymakers understood that a fullscale effort to liberate the Soviet bloc would almost certainly spark a hot war between the two nations. John Foster Dulles had overcome his previous zero-sum mindset to arrive at this view by trusting in his intellectual capacity to think logically and flexibly. It was essential in the nuclear age that adroit minds prevailed. Therefore, as the US reached mid-decade, one of the most vociferous Cold Warriors of the post-war era had seemingly

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turned his back on the entire concept of the rollback of the Soviet bloc as an appropriate goal for US foreign policy in the Cold War.

The policy shift towards evolution and de´tente in 1955 Despite John Foster Dulles’ epiphany, US foreign policy towards the Soviet bloc was not fundamentally recalibrated in 1955 to reflect his new position. However, more moderate views were accommodated in policy papers in terms of an ongoing shift towards a more restrained policy that had commenced after the East German uprising in the summer of 1953. It was also logical to move towards a moderate policy since numerous US government estimates in the mid-1950s came to the same pessimistic conclusion regarding the feasibility of retracting Soviet power from Eastern Europe. American capabilities were too limited, and Soviet capabilities too extensive, to make this a realistic prospect.71 In January 1955 the NSC issued a revised policy paper that was based on a lengthy report written for the Eisenhower government by Max Milikan at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. NSC 5505/1, which superseded NSC 162/2, shifted back towards Bohlen’s concept of coexistence with the USSR. It revealed the distinct change in emphasis from offensive to more restrained objectives towards the Soviet bloc that had also been vocalised recently by Dulles. According to the NSC, although the US should still seek to ‘foster changes in the character and policies of the Soviet-Communist bloc regimes’, it must now pursue ‘evolutionary rather than revolutionary change’ in the Soviet satellites. In the latest directive, emphasis was placed on securing Western strength and unity rather than on pursuing provocative operations unilaterally against the Soviet satellites that would be divisive for Western cohesion: ‘It is to be emphasized that no political warfare strategy can in any sense substitute for adequate military, political, and economic programs designed to strengthen the free world.’ However, although this shift towards a gradualist policy of ‘evolution’ rather than a more aggressive approach favouring ‘revolution’ was stressed several times in NSC 5505/1, rollback was

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still not completely rejected. The new directive called for ‘a flexible combination of military, political, economic, propaganda, and covert actions’ that would allow the US to implement ‘anti-regime measures’. The US should also continue to be prepared to take ‘advantage as appropriate of the special opportunities existing in these countries to exert greater pressures, and to weaken the ties which bind the Satellites to the USSR’.72 Not everyone in the Eisenhower administration was happy with the deviation towards a more moderate Soviet bloc policy. At a meeting held in early January 1955, the OCB members discussed the feasibility of detaching a Soviet satellite. Allen Dulles warned that ‘the so-called completely “soft” policy is subject to misinterpretation and we are apt to lapse into a do nothing policy’ in following this approach. Dulles acknowledged that the CIA ‘is continually needing guidance on this question of “soft” versus “provocative” courses of action’, but this should not rule out one option over the other. Dulles then invoked the appeasement policy of the British and French at Munich in 1938 to caution against a policy in the Cold War that completely rejected an offensive component. This was not a wise approach in Dulles’ opinion, as ‘Czechoslovakia would never have been lost if someone had been there doing something about it.’73 The debates over the language finally adopted in NSC 5505/1 reflected this reluctance to completely abandon the retraction of Soviet power from the Eastern bloc as a core US objective. The Eisenhower administration was arriving at a more realistic policy reflective of its limited capabilities in Eastern Europe and the certainty that the Kremlin would choose to go to war to protect its control of that region. There were also problems with the hypothesis that the Kremlin would be any more inclined to allow its authority to devolve in Eastern Europe than it would be tolerant of a sudden retraction of its power there. In any case, although evolution was the prominent feature of the new Soviet bloc policy, a space was left open within the revised policy statement to support revolution behind the iron curtain should any special opportunities arise. The effort to hold together these two conflicting aspects of policy – evolution and revolution – were in evidence when the NSC met to

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discuss final approval of NSC 5505/1. Eisenhower stressed that the US ‘was not in a position to state that it would promote revolution in the Soviet Union’, blandly stating that ‘we must try to [. . .] win “these guys” over’. Yet when Vice President Nixon asked for confirmation ‘that the strategy set forth in NSC 5505 would not necessarily rule out resort to revolutionary methods if they seemed likely to be successful’, he was informed that this was correct by National Security Adviser Robert Cutler. Both John Foster Dulles (despite his recently transformed attitude) and Allen Dulles also agreed that rollback should not be ruled out. They recommended that ‘the exploitation of Soviet vulnerabilities along evolutionary rather than revolutionary lines’ should not ‘destroy all possibility of seizing opportunities for exploiting a different type of strategy if such opportunities clearly presented themselves’.74 Therefore, under NSC 5505/1 the US would keep its options open with an opportunistic policy towards the Soviet bloc. The support of revolution and rollback behind the iron curtain had still not been completely rejected. During 1955 external factors played a fundamental role in shaping US policy towards the Soviet bloc back towards Titoism. First, the post-Stalin leadership sought a rapprochement with Tito’s Yugoslavia. This strengthened views inside the State Department that the Soviet grip on the satellites was tenuous. Soviet moves to bring Tito back into the communist fold in May and June, as well as the establishment of the Warsaw Pact that was ratified by all the signatories in late May, signified an attempt to shore up the Kremlin’s defensive position. The Kremlin’s efforts to re-establish closer ties with Tito led to its recognition of Yugoslavia as an independent nationalist communist regime in the Soviet bloc, with Khrushchev announcing in Belgrade on 2 June that ‘questions of internal organization or differences in social systems are solely the concern of the individual countries’.75 This apparent liberalisation of Soviet policy could have a significant impact on Soviet relations with the other satellite countries. The prevalence of anti-Soviet and nationalist feeling among the Eastern European populations gave Washington hope that over time the satellite regimes might be able to seek greater independence too. Khrushchev’s recognition of

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different forms of socialism in the Tito model might present opportunities for other satellites to exert ‘some gradation’ of greater nationalism and independence from Moscow.76 Given this perceivable sense of vulnerability, the US should try to exploit any opportunities while the situation was fluid. John Foster Dulles took new heart from these developments behind the iron curtain. Although he had recently declared that the retraction of Soviet power from Eastern Europe would not positively affect US national security, he still held out hope that these manoeuvres by the post-Stalin leadership would present ‘a real opportunity in the present situation for a rollback of Soviet power’. He optimistically told the NSC members in May that ‘rollback might leave the present satellite states’ with a far greater degree of national autonomy ‘in a status not unlike that of Finland’.77 Dulles’ hopes for a diminishment of Soviet control over the East were reinvigorated by the prospect of the upcoming peace talks with the Soviet leadership at Geneva in July. But liberation was still not a priority for Dulles. This was indicated by his failure to press for placing the status of Eastern Europe on the agenda at the Geneva Conference.78 Prior to Geneva, the State Department had actually established that the US should now seek the independence of Eastern Europe through negotiations with the Soviet leadership. In light of the upcoming Geneva talks, it was stated in NSC 5524/1 that ‘the elimination of Soviet control over the satellites’ should be pursued by ‘appropriate means short of military force’, including ‘if possible, negotiation with the USSR’.79 In particular, negotiations over German reunification should be linked to the withdrawal of Soviet troops from East Germany and Poland, while the Austrian State Treaty, which was being finalised in Vienna in May, should be tied to a Soviet commitment to also withdraw from Hungary and Romania. This revealed that the methodology of political warfare was now divorced from official US policy directives related to the Soviet bloc. Although political warfare activists and policymakers alike sought the ultimate retraction of Soviet power from Eastern Europe, very different methods – negotiations versus offensive political – psychological warfare – were envisaged by these two groups.

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The reduction of Soviet power from Eastern Europe remained the ultimate objective of US policy throughout 1955. This long-term aspiration would primarily be sought through negotiations with the Kremlin and the encouragement of evolution and nationalism, not aggressive covert operations. But this raised several problems for US policy. After the peace talks at Geneva, the CIA asserted that: ‘Moscow has made clear that the status of the Satellites is not a matter for international negotiation.’80 Diplomacy was apparently a dead end, raising serious doubt over the credibility of this strategy. At Geneva the US, because of Soviet intransigence, had failed to link German reunification and the Austrian State Treaty to the retraction of Soviet military power from the wider region. US policy now emphasised negotiations as the primary means of securing the retraction of Soviet power from Eastern Europe, yet American intelligence estimates recognised that such an approach would be rejected by the Kremlin. There was another flaw in the gradualist/diplomatic approach. A policy that recognised the limitations of US capabilities towards the Soviet bloc, and therefore emphasised political negotiations, ran the risk of implicitly accepting Soviet control over Eastern Europe. If it became widely perceived throughout the Eastern bloc that the US had recognised the legitimacy of Soviet power, or even just accepted a pragmatic modus vivendi with the Soviets, then this would intrinsically damage the longer-term US aspiration of an independent Eastern European bloc. The danger was that the indigenous populations would be demoralised and American rhetoric and the political warfare campaign would all appear to be disingenuous. The OCB readily identified this risk, asserting in late August that the ‘morale of the captive peoples has probably deteriorated as an aftermath of Geneva’. There was a common perception prevailing amongst ordinary Eastern Europeans that Washington had been guilty of ‘political naivete’, and even worse, that this marked ‘a first step toward abandonment of their interests’.81 As a result, it was stressed in NSC 5524/1 that the US ‘must avoid in all circumstances any action that even appears to indicate any abandonment of this objective’.82

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A year of upheaval As Eisenhower entered an election year in 1956 his administration was still struggling to develop a coherent strategy for rolling back communist power in Central and Eastern Europe, one of the most trumpeted platform pledges of the 1952 presidential election campaign. By early 1956, the commonly held public view in the US was that a cordial international climate had now emerged based on the ‘spirit of Geneva’, following the heads of state meeting and the signing of the Austrian State Treaty and Belgrade Pact. Publicly the desire for de´tente seemed to exclude aggressive Cold War policies against the Soviet bloc. Moreover, CIA analysts continued to advise that liberation was unfeasible through methods short of war. For instance, a National Intelligence Estimate released by the CIA in January recognised that the ‘military, political, and economic significance of the Satellites to the USSR is so great that Moscow almost certainly regards the maintenance of control over the area as an essential element of its power position’.83 Privately, however, liberation was still retained as a US policy goal. Despite de´tente, this continued to keep the space open on the operational level for more provocative subversive activities behind the iron curtain. In early 1956, because of the improving international climate, Eisenhower’s government became more self-aware of the contradictions in its approach to the Soviet bloc. There was also a serious tension between Washington’s aspiration and its capability to roll back Soviet power from Eastern Europe. In a progress report on NSC 174 released at the end of February, the OCB acknowledged that the US was pursuing ‘[c]onflicting [a]pproaches’ to the Soviet satellites. Covert political warfare operations that were ‘intended to encourage anti-communist activities and passive resistance’, the OCB claimed, ‘are somewhat incompatible with a de´tente [and] evolutionary changes in satellite regimes’. The OCB argued that a policy review would be required to bring about ‘the resolution in practice of such incompatible policies’. Yet the OCB concluded that Washington would probably just have to live with these inconsistencies, rather than abandon liberation in favour of de´tente and evolutionary change

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in Eastern Europe. According to the OCB, the US might ‘have to undertake to follow simultaneously two policies with inconsistent courses of action, representing divergent approaches to the one objective’.84 US policy was floundering for coherence, but in early 1956 it received another jolt by events emanating from within the Soviet bloc. In 1955 Nikita Khrushchev had successfully overcome Malenkov in the power struggle within the Soviet Presidium following Stalin’s death. On 25 February 1956, Khrushchev gave a landmark speech in a closed session of the Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) that sent shockwaves across the Soviet bloc. In his ‘secret speech’ the First Secretary denounced the cult of personality that Stalin had cultivated in order to allow him to abuse his power. Khrushchev made some incredible admissions about the ‘mass acts of abuse’ that had taken place during Stalin’s rule. This included widespread ‘arrests and deportations of many thousands of [innocent] people, execution without trial and without normal investigation’, all of which ‘created conditions of insecurity, fear and even desperation’. Khrushchev called for the CPSU to back the Central Committee’s plan to ‘abolish the cult of the individual once and for all’ in order to return to a true form of Marxist– Leninist ideology.85 US policymakers were astonished when they learned of Khrushchev’s call for de-Stalinisation and liberalisation of the Soviet system, along with the demotion of hard-line Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov. Khrushchev’s support of reform in the Sovietsatellite relationship seemed to indicate a further vulnerability (alongside the East German uprising, the rapprochement with Tito and the creation of the Warsaw Pact) in the Soviet position in the post-Stalin era. During his secret speech Khrushchev had urged for discretion within the CPSU, warning that ‘we should not give ammunition to the enemy; we should not wash our dirty linen before their eyes’.86 But Allen Dulles immediately recognised the potentially explosive quality of the speech, and made it a top priority for the Agency to obtain a full copy of it. Within two months Dulles had succeeded. Two matching versions of the speech from

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separate sources were acquired by the CIA, confirming their authenticity.87 Senior Eisenhower officials now tried to devise how best to exploit this rare admission by the Kremlin of its own fallibility. Dulles reviewed the text of the secret speech for the NSC on 22 March, declaring that Khrushchev’s deliberate attack on Stalin ‘afforded the United States a great opportunity, both covertly and overtly, to exploit the situation to its advantage’. The DCI puzzled over Khrushchev’s motives for so vehemently criticising Stalin, positing that there ‘was always the possibility, of course, that Khrushchev had been drunk’. Whatever his reasons, Dulles believed that ‘Khrushchev and the other leaders had been guilty of a most serious mistake’.88 At the same NSC meeting Eisenhower and his senior advisers also discussed some gloomy progress reports evaluating the general status of US policy towards the Soviet bloc. Emboldened by the revelation of Khrushchev’s denunciation of Stalin, Eisenhower insisted that his government ‘mustn’t be less aggressive in pursuing our objectives simply because we had thus far not achieved the progress we would like to see’. Furthermore, the President was confident that lessons of the past would ultimately vindicate US objectives: [. . .] history proved that no single country like Soviet Russia could really be successful in controlling indefinitely vast areas such as those comprised by the satellites unless, like ourselves, in an earlier era with the Indians, we virtually exterminated the population.89 Eisenhower rather tamely concluded that: ‘We should keep up the good work and hope that the Soviet Union keeps encountering additional trouble in the satellites.’90 Although the substance of Eisenhower’s comments amounted to the US keeping its fingers crossed and hoping for the best, the US government did opt for a decisive course of action to aggressively exploit Khrushchev’s secret speech. Eisenhower approved its publication in the New York Times on 4 June. Of much greater importance was the decision to disseminate the speech widely across

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Eastern Europe through NCFE propaganda channels. The aim was to take full advantage of this apparent disharmony in the Soviet camp in order to foster anti-Soviet and nationalist unrest in the Soviet orbit. John Foster Dulles enthused to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that Khrushchev was ‘on the ropes and, if we can keep the pressure up [. . .] there is going to occur a very great disintegration within the apparatus of the international communist organization’.91 But the decision to create trouble for Khrushchev by stirring up nationalist agitation in the Soviet bloc did not sit comfortably with US policy objectives based on de´tente. On 15 March, the US commitment to seeking ‘evolutionary change in the Soviet system’ had again been confirmed in NSC 5602/1.92 Even more importantly, the US propaganda campaign to disseminate Khrushchev’s speech proved extremely effective at stirring up anti-communist unrest behind the iron curtain. On 28 June, a protest for better economic conditions among Polish workers at a locomotive plant in Poznan´ turned into an open revolt against the communist regime, amid demands for political and religious freedoms and an end to Soviet domination of the country.93 John Foster Dulles shared a telephone call with his brother as the State Department started receiving telegrams from its missions in Eastern Europe detailing the outbreak of riots in Poland. Secretary Dulles excitedly stated that when the satellites ‘begin to crack, [. . .] they can crack fast. We have to keep the pressure on.’94 But in reality there was no American strategy in place beyond stirring up anticommunist unrest. There was no intention to assist any unrest that might break out behind the iron curtain following RFE’s dissemination of Khrushchev’s speech throughout Poland. Therefore, although American propaganda had been very effective at rousing the Poles, the promotion of anti-Soviet feeling which then turned violent in Poznan´ was clearly an ill-judged venture by Washington. As had been the case in East Germany three years earlier, Eisenhower was powerless to intervene in support of the rebellious local population – because of his desire to avoid escalating the crisis into a war with Moscow. The Soviet military and Polish communist authorities easily put down the riots. Having encouraged dissent, Eisenhower and

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Dulles once again could only fall back on mild protestations in response to decisive and brutal Soviet military action. A review of US Soviet bloc policy under NSC 174 was undertaken over the summer of 1956. The State Department was keen to reflect on US actions in light of the Poznan´ riots. Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs C. Burke Elbrick believed that the latest policy directive, NSC 5608, ‘has somewhat modified the statement of US basic objectives in Eastern Europe’. It had also ‘redefined the general courses of action to bring them into conformity with the present situation in Eastern Europe and with a more realistic assessment of US capabilities to effect developments in that area’.95 NSC 174 had reassessed US foreign policy towards the Soviet bloc in light of the East German uprising, and the expectations of any progress towards the retraction of Soviet power had unsurprisingly been very low. Similarly limited progress towards the achievement of ultimate US objectives was anticipated in NSC 5608/1, primarily because of the projection of Soviet politico– military power in the region. Nevertheless, there were rays of hope for the fulfillment of US policy goals. Several developments over the past few years had appreciably weakened the Soviet position towards its satellites, including the rise of nationalism, Khrushchev’s denigration of Stalin, the prominence of Tito’s success in forging an independent path for Yugoslavia, and the difficulties raised by the question of German reunification. The conclusion in the latest policy review was therefore upbeat, that the ‘fluid situation in the satellites has increased the previously limited U.S. capabilities to influence a basic change in Soviet domination of the satellites’. By emphasising evolutionary change in the Soviet bloc, Washington could hope that ‘an internal relaxation might result in the long run in the development of forces and pressures leading to fundamental changes of the satellite system in the direction of national independence and individual freedom and security’.96 US policy was bedevilled by inconsistent logic. Although policy analysts admitted that any weakening of Soviet power in the satellites was improbable, it was evident that Khrushchev’s attempts to liberalise Soviet policy towards Eastern Europe was creating stresses

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and tensions between Moscow and the satellites. The problem for Washington was that it although it could aggravate these developments it was powerless to control them, despite the fanciful claim made in NSC 5608/1 that US capabilities towards the Soviet bloc had increased in recent months. US psychological warfare, through RFE in particular, could stir up nationalist and anticommunist passions behind the iron curtain, but American policymakers clung to the unrealistic notion that the volatile temper of Eastern European nationalism could be simultaneously stirred up and restrained through the use of propaganda. The US would continue to conduct psychological warfare activities to exploit present strains in the Soviet– satellite relationship, but it should also take care to avoid ‘incitements to violence or to action when the probable reprisals or other results would yield a net loss in terms of U.S. objectives’.97 The outcomes of East Germany and Poznan´ pointed to the unlikelihood of preserving this fine line between passive resistance and ‘premature’ revolts. Vice President Nixon’s explanation of the distinctions in US policy embodied this inconsistency: We are not saying that we are going to initiate uprisings and violence in the satellites. We are merely saying that we will not always discourage such uprisings and violence if the uprisings should occur spontaneously. The policy paper [. . .] should not be too ‘soft’ in character.98 US foreign policy was faced with a paradox in the Soviet bloc. The ultimate objective was to secure independent representative governments for the Eastern European states. This of course required a decline in Soviet control over the region. But whenever Soviet dominance over Eastern Europe was jeopardised – and therefore the US moved closer towards fulfilling its core objective of retracting Soviet power – the Kremlin was compelled to adopt a hard-line policy, cracking down on liberal forces in order to once more impose its authority. In other words, the closer Eastern Europe moved towards independence, the further away its attainment became.

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The Kremlin’s intolerance of any display of resistance to communist authority had already been demonstrated in East Germany and in Poznan´, when workers’ demonstrations that had turned into political riots had been suppressed by Soviet troops. In the autumn of 1956 a new concern emerged as a result of developments in the Khrushchev –Tito relationship. The Soviet leader suddenly left for an eight-day visit to Yugoslavia in midSeptember, which was followed by a further meeting in the Crimea between Tito and the Soviet leadership at the end of the month. US intelligence analysts now raised the worrying prospect of another serious rift between Belgrade and Moscow. This could have serious implications for US hopes of fostering the independence of the Eastern European states from Moscow through a gradualist policy. The CIA now believed that Khrushchev was becoming isolated in the Soviet Presidium. Khrushchev’s hawkish opponents believed his liberalisation policies were undermining the Soviet grip over Eastern Europe. A breakdown of the Soviet– Yugoslav rapprochement and a rejection of Khrushchev’s more tolerant policies would inevitably result in a return to a tougher Soviet regional policy in a defensive effort to consolidate Moscow’s dominance over the Eastern bloc.99 The Polish October As the Eisenhower administration moved into the election season in the autumn of 1956, its entire Soviet bloc policy came under the public spotlight. The tables had turned and Eisenhower and John Foster Dulles now faced criticism from the Democrats over their incoherent ‘liberation’ policy. Dulles wrote to Eisenhower in September to reassure the President that their rhetoric had always been consistent, despite charges to the contrary from their political opponents. Dulles denied that there had ever been a pledge in the 1952 Republican platform to liberate Eastern Europe and that their rhetoric had been more restrained. He claimed that ‘you and I have consistently made it clear, and you notably at the Geneva Summit Conference, that we seek the genuine independence of the captive peoples’. Not only this, Dulles also wanted to take credit for a revitalisation of nationalism and anti-communist resistance behind

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the iron curtain, claiming that the administration ‘has done much to revive the influences which are inherent in freedom’. As a result of US psychological warfare operations in particular, Dulles said, ‘we have thereby contributed toward creating strains and stresses within the captive world’.100 Ironically, Dulles’ letter to Eisenhower in which he denied inconsistencies in their approach towards the Soviet bloc actually conveyed those inconsistencies neatly. Dulles wanted to have it both ways – he wanted to take credit for stirring up nationalist forces behind the iron curtain, without accepting American responsibility through a ‘pledge’ for any physical outbreaks of dissent against the communist regimes. Dulles also failed to provide a credible defence of US policy in light of the criticisms he had levelled at Truman’s Soviet bloc policy in 1952. Once in office, the Eisenhower administration had in fact adopted more moderate policies and operations against communism in Eastern Europe than its predecessor had. This was evidenced by the shift in emphasis under Eisenhower to ‘evolutionary’ change and the drawing down of aggressive rollback operations by the CIA during the mid-1950s. The Eisenhower government interpreted the events of the ‘Polish October’ as a vindication of its approach, accentuating evolutionary change and the encouragement of unrest in the satellites. In midOctober 1956 a high-level delegation of Soviet officials led by Khrushchev rushed to Poland in response to signs that the Polish United Workers’ Party (PZPR) was on the verge of independently undertaking autonomous nationalist reforms. Hardliners in the Kremlin feared that this signalled further cracks in the Soviet position in Eastern Europe. Khrushchev’s visit to Warsaw was combined with intimidating Soviet troop manoeuvres on the Polish border. But the Polish leadership was able to resist Soviet threats and appointed the moderate Wladyslaw Gomulka to power during the crisis. US policymakers believed that this indicated a further demonstration that Soviet control over the Eastern bloc was devolving, as a result of its apparent tolerance of a national communist regime in Poland as well as in Yugoslavia. In fact the Poles had only been able to secure Soviet political concessions during

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the October crisis based on the key condition that they remained loyal to the Kremlin and to the Warsaw Pact. Although the crisis revealed new strains in the Soviet – satellite relationship, the Polish October did not fundamentally weaken Soviet dominance over Eastern Europe, as was hoped in Washington. The Soviet delegation to Poland had secured satisfactory assurances from the PZPR that its reforms were consistent with Khrushchev’s moderate policies, and therefore decided against military intervention at this point. The US was once again impotent to influence developments inside Poland during the crisis. The Eisenhower administration was compelled to publicise its policy of non-intervention in an effort to avoid provoking a Soviet military crackdown, and anxiously waited for events to unfold. In a televised appearance on 21 October, Dulles announced that the US would not send troops to assist the Poles should Moscow intervene by force.101 On 23 October the PPS recommended that while the US should ‘encourage Poland to become increasingly independent of the Soviets’ in the longer term, it was imperative to ‘avert Soviet forceful intervention in Poland, which would not only terminate that independence but might also involve a risk of spreading hostilities’. As a result, the US government must adopt a ‘restrained’ public posture to reassure the Kremlin that it would not seek to exploit any lessening of Soviet control over Poland.102 The Hungarian Revolution Although Washington publicly conveyed that it did not want to exploit any stresses in Moscow’s control over the Soviet bloc, the ostensibly private RFE launched an intensive propaganda campaign during the Polish crisis to inform people throughout the satellite states about the events in Poland. The Eisenhower administration hoped that by spreading news of Soviet concessions and tolerance of Gomulka’s national communist regime in Poland, similar reforms could be encouraged elsewhere behind the iron curtain. In other words, the US was clearly attempting to take advantage of the Polish situation through its psychological warfare activities, despite its public rhetoric that claimed otherwise.

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The political unrest in Poland quickly spread to Hungary. Patriotic student demonstrations were staged in Budapest on 23 October in a display of solidarity for the Polish reformers. The demonstrations were initially peaceful, although anti-Soviet in nature, but they quickly turned violent when police fired into the crowd. This provoked an outburst of riots by Hungarian workers and students that rapidly escalated into a full-scale revolt against Soviet domination of the country. The US bore no direct responsibility for the outbreak of the Hungarian Revolution. The primary causes were Soviet hegemony, the unpopularity of the puppet communist government under Erno˝ Gero˝ and Ma´tya´s Ra´kosi, and police brutality against the demonstrators on the evening of 23 October. But the Eisenhower administration was indirectly implicated in the outbreak of the uprising. US propaganda outlets had vigorously spread news of the Polish reforms in order to induce similar demonstrations throughout the Soviet bloc. It was now becoming clear on the streets of Budapest that Washington was unable to restrain the pent-up forces of nationalism once peaceful demonstrations descended into violent rioting and revolution. Hungarian protesters had crossed the line from passive resistance to violent action, and the US was powerless to shape the course of events that would subsequently unfold. The panicked Hungarian Communist Party leadership correctly feared that the riots were spiralling into an anti-communist revolution and requested immediate Soviet military assistance under the terms of the Warsaw Pact. The Kremlin obliged, sending Soviet ground forces into the capital during the night of 23 October. Soviet forces immediately began to suppress the riots, firing on protesters in the centre of Budapest the following day. The lack of available options by which the US could affect events on the ground in Hungary frustrated Eisenhower and his senior officials. As reports of the fighting started filtering into the State Department on 24 October, Dulles expressed his concern that the US would be criticised for its ineffectiveness. In a telephone conversation with US Ambassador to the United Nations Henry Cabot Lodge, Dulles worried that ‘it will be said that here are the great moments

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and when they came and these fellows were ready to stand up and die, we were caught napping and doing nothing’.103 Worse still, it quickly became clear that the US was being blamed to some extent for the outbreak of the uprising. American allies were turning on the Eisenhower administration for whipping up revolutionary passions through US propaganda and then leaving the rebels to meet their fate. For instance, on 28 October the US Embassy in Austria warned that the perception there was to blame ‘RFE and our balloon operations as having incited the Hungarians to action’, yet Washington had failed ‘to do anything effective for them now that they have risen against their Communist oppressors’.104 In Washington, the Eisenhower administration attempted to formulate a strategy out of its extremely limited capabilities. But the reality was that nothing could be done to assist the Hungarians directly because the US continued to rule out military intervention to save the rebels. A few belligerent proposals were put forward, but these were immediately dismissed by Eisenhower and Dulles. Robert Amory in the NSC Planning Board suggested that Washington could issue an ultimatum demanding the withdrawal of Soviet forces from Hungary, and that the US should consider a pre-emptive surgical nuclear strike against the Red Army’s supply routes into the country.105 C. D. Jackson, Eisenhower’s political warfare champion who left government service in 1954 in frustration at Washington’s failure to adopt a more aggressive policy towards the Soviet bloc, also clamoured for an assertive US response to the Hungarian crisis. Eisenhower later wrote to Jackson expressing sympathy for his desire to intervene more meaningfully in support of the revolutionaries. ‘I know that your whole being cries out for “action” on the Hungarian problem,’ Eisenhower wrote, but ‘to annihilate Hungary, should it become the scene of a bitter conflict, is in no way to help her.’106 Washington was not prepared to wage a nuclear war over the fate of Hungary. In any case, even if a conventional military conflict did not descend into nuclear war, Hungary would be lost long before the US could mobilise its military power. Therefore, having ruled out any form of intervention in Hungary, Washington was left to ponder alternative courses of action. Its response was limited to issuing

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public protests against the Soviet military intervention in Budapest, initiating a food and emergency relief programme, and taking up the matter of Soviet intervention diplomatically in the United Nations Security Council.107 Initial American assessments of whether or not the Hungarian uprising could survive without external assistance were bleak. It was immediately recognised that Moscow was faced with two options by the outbreak of anti-Soviet and anti-communist disorder in one of its satellites. At a NSC meeting on 26 October, Allen Dulles reasoned that Moscow could either ‘return to a hard Stalinist regime’ or ‘permit developments in the direction of genuine democracy’. Initial reports regarding the scope of the rebellion estimated that ‘the revolt in Hungary constituted the most serious threat yet to be posed to continued Soviet control of the satellites’ and that this ‘risked the complete loss of Soviet control’. Therefore it was likely that the Kremlin would feel compelled to take a tough stance to re-establish its authority in Hungary in order to prevent dissent from spreading to the rest of the Soviet bloc. According to Dulles, ‘the Hungarian revolt may demonstrate the inability of a moderate national Communist regime to survive in any of the satellites’. This called into question the entire basis of the modified US strategy that was modelled on seeking evolutionary change in the East through the emergence of national communist regimes as a first step towards fully independent regimes.108 Despite American pessimism about the survival of the Hungarian revolt, as the dust settled following the initial outbreak of violence it appeared that a peaceful political settlement might be reached between Budapest and Moscow. The hard-line communist government was replaced by a national communist regime led by Imre Nagy, Ja´nos Ka´da´r and Ge´za Losonczy during the initial convulsions of the revolution. In late October, Nagy announced that he would form a coalition government by accepting non-communists from the Smallholders, National Peasants’ Party and Social Democrats. Nagy also initiated negotiations with the Kremlin for the withdrawal of Soviet forces from the country. These moves raised hopes that Hungary would be allowed to pursue a national communist course

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based on the recent Gomulka model in Poland. Eisenhower immediately attempted to coalesce this development by reassuring the Kremlin that the US did not wish to take advantage of any progressive changes inside the Soviet bloc. In a television and radio address on 31 October, Eisenhower declared his desire ‘to remove any false fears that we would look upon new governments in these Eastern European countries as potential military allies’.109 Khrushchev was apparently (and not unsurprisingly) unimpressed with American efforts to put his mind at rest, telling Tito during the Hungarian crisis that ‘if we let events take their course then the West will say we are either stupid or weak, and that’s one and the same thing’.110 US policy analysts continuously reviewed developments in Hungary on a daily basis during the crisis. On 31 October, following Nagy’s announcement of negotiations with Moscow and the formation of a coalition government, the PPS drafted a paper in which it concluded that ‘Moscow is apparently willing to accept, however reluctantly, a communist government, which, while remaining loyal to its military and political alliance with the USSR, asserts its “national independence” and its right to pursue its own internal road to communism.’111 This scenario seemed to be playing itself out in Poland. So the Eisenhower administration hoped that Nagy would also be able to restrain the impulses of his people for complete independence from Moscow in order to consolidate more modest concessions from Khrushchev. The tipping point in the Hungarian crisis came at the beginning of November, when Nagy appeared to endorse the more extreme demands of the revolutionaries. On 1 November, Nagy announced to the United Nations Hungary’s neutrality in the Cold War and declared that he would initiate negotiations with Moscow to pull Hungary out of the Warsaw Pact.112 This was the final straw for the Kremlin. Khrushchev, facing his own pressure from hardliners inside the CPSU, had demonstrated a willingness to consider tolerating internal nationalist communist movements. But this latest move by Nagy went much further. Hungary was now attempting to break free from the Soviet bloc altogether by pursuing an independent foreign policy as well as its domestic agenda. Kremlin hardliners now

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stepped in and decided to oust the Nagy regime and reimpose Soviet military control over Hungary. Although negotiations between the Hungarian and Soviet authorities ostensibly continued until 4 November, the Soviet leadership felt that the threat posed to Soviet hegemony throughout Eastern Europe was so acute that the decision to invade Hungary had already been reached several days earlier.113 In the early hours of 4 November, Moscow unleashed 200,000 Soviet troops against the Hungarian freedom fighters under Operation Whirlwind. US efforts to moderate Soviet action during the initial crisis – through Eisenhower’s restrained public announcements – had failed. The US government was now powerless to assist the Hungarians in their time of greatest need, as Soviet tanks rolled back onto the streets of Budapest. Eisenhower cut a dejected figure at a NSC meeting on 8 November when he realised that the US was utterly impotent to affect developments in Hungary: [. . .] this was indeed a bitter pill for us to swallow. We say we are at the end of our patience, but what can we do that is really constructive? Should we break off diplomatic relations with the USSR? What would be gained by this action? The Soviets don’t care. The whole business was shocking to the point of being unbelievable.114 By 11 November, just one week after the second invasion, the Soviets had successfully extinguished the last remnants of the revolt. Washington recognised that the Soviet military intervention in Hungary had severely tarnished Moscow’s reputation around the world, and in particular in the West. It was undoubtedly a disaster for Soviet foreign policy in the propaganda battle in the Cold War. But crucially, the Soviet action reasserted Moscow’s dominance over the entire Eastern European region. Therefore, although the Soviet suppression of the Hungarian Revolution was a brutal and despicable act, and one that no doubt intensified hatred and resentment against Moscow amongst ordinary people throughout the Soviet bloc, strategically the military intervention successfully re-established Soviet control over its sphere of influence.

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The ramifications for US foreign policy were also dismal. Under Truman, US political warfare activists had aspired to topple the communist regimes in the Soviet bloc by fostering underground resistance movements. Under Eisenhower the entire policy had gradually been recalibrated to concentrate on nurturing nationalism and restraining outbreaks of active resistance to Soviet rule. This policy had been based on a false premise. Events in Hungary, and to a lesser extent in East Germany and Poland before it, demonstrated that it was not possible to agitate and simultaneously restrain anti-Soviet and anticommunist resistance as if on a dimmer switch. Once Hungarian passions had been aroused there was no turning back, in particular once Nagy backed down to the demands of the revolution. US power, which was preponderant in the West, was impotent in the East. Aftermath of revolution and the demise of US political warfare The Soviet suppression of the Hungarian Revolution was an enormous setback for American prestige. The US government was not only shown to be powerless in Hungary, it also faced widespread charges of hypocrisy and irresponsibility from around the world, from friends and enemies alike. US foreign policy had publicly agitated against Soviet rule behind the iron curtain ever since the end of World War II, but when the Hungarians answered the call and rose up against their Soviet-backed oppressors, the US stood idly by. In the midst of the crisis, on 9 November, the US Ambassador to the UN, Henry Cabot Lodge, reported to Dulles at the State Department that ‘there is the feeling at UN that for 10 years we have been exciting the Hungarians through our Radio Free Europe, and now that they are in trouble, we turn our backs on them’. Eisenhower himself was aware of the perception ‘that we have excited Hungarians for all these years, and [are] now turning our backs to them when they are in a jam’.115 Washington’s West German allies were critical of the role played by RFE, which had allegedly ‘stirred up the Hungarians to revolt and that the U.S. had then abandoned them’.116 Allen Dulles vented his fury at an OCB meeting that the US and not the Soviet Union was the target of so much criticism around the

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world for the tragic events that were taking place in Hungary.117 The timing of these events was politically inconvenient for Eisenhower, who was forced to go onto the defensive in the week leading up to the presidential election on 14 November. The administration was embarrassingly obliged to justify US foreign policy towards the Soviet bloc and the role it had played in stirring up the Hungarian people to rebel against Soviet and communist oppression. The US government also faced charges (and much bitterness from British Prime Minister Anthony Eden) that it ignored Hungary and prioritised the Suez crisis after the Israeli invasion of Sinai on 29 October and the Anglo– French invasion of Port Said on 6 November.118 Eisenhower and Dulles vehemently refuted accusations that US policy had been reckless and that the Hungarians had been abandoned. On the very day of the presidential election Eisenhower released a public statement to make clear that ‘the US doesn’t now, and never has, advocated open rebellion by an undefended populace against force over which they could not possibly prevail’.119 Eisenhower also privately clarified US policy with government officials. For example, he informed Lodge that the US had always opposed outbreaks of violent rebellion against Soviet rule in Eastern Europe, ‘but was amazed that [Lodge] was in ignorance of this fact’. Clearly, if a high-level member of Eisenhower’s own government did not understand the delicate nuances of US foreign policy towards the Soviet bloc, then it was extremely unlikely that the ‘captive peoples’ of Eastern Europe would have a sophisticated grasp of the distinction between exhortations to passive and active resistance.120 The timing of the Hungarian uprising to coincide with Eisenhower’s re-election was ironic, given that the 1952 Republican election campaign platform had been partly based on negative politicking against Truman’s Soviet bloc policy. In the run-up to the 1956 presidential election Eisenhower informed the American public that the crises in Hungary and the Middle East ‘have no connection whatsoever with matters of partisanship’.121 But in the context of the 1952 presidential election this was a faulty assertion that veiled his administration’s double standards. More than that, the Hungarian

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Revolution highlighted that a flagship policy to bring independence to Eastern Europe – one that had been so vaunted by the Republicans during the 1952 campaign – had been based on a conceptual fabrication. The Eisenhower administration had disguised the longterm aspiration for Eastern Europe’s independence with a commitment and strategy to actually bring it about. The events of October and November 1956 finally revealed the emperor’s new clothes. There had never been a viable American strategy to roll back Soviet power from Eastern Europe, despite the public rhetoric and the private initiatives. Fortunately for Eisenhower, this point was missed by the American public. The US presidential election in November 1956 was not an electoral appraisal of the success of US policy towards the Soviet bloc during Eisenhower’s first term in office, and he was overwhelmingly re-elected back into the White House. In the aftermath of the Hungarian Revolution, the Eisenhower administration undertook an extensive audit of its psychological warfare activities in order to gauge whether its covertly directed propaganda organisations had overstepped the mark and incited the Hungarian people to open rebellion. This showed that the primary concern for Eisenhower was not to rigorously scrutinise whether the Soviet bloc policy was misguided, but to contain the public-relations fallout around the world about the American role in stirring up the rebellion. The findings of these reviews reassured Eisenhower and the Dulles brothers that US propaganda had in general differentiated between active and passive resistance. A few inconsistencies were found in RFE’s reporting when Hungarian e´migre´ broadcasters had provided tactical advice or conveyed their output in a tone that was ‘unnecessarily provocative’. Consequently, RFE’s Hungarian section was quietly reorganised after the uprising and 11 members of its team were released.122 But the US government reviews concluded that, in general, American propaganda had disseminated factual information throughout the Polish and Hungarian crises. After the initial studies had been concluded, Allen Dulles reassured his chief executive that ‘the uprising resulted from ten years of Soviet repression and was finally sparked by the shooting on 23 October of

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peaceful demonstrators, and did not result from any external influence, such as RFE broadcasts or Free Europe leaflets’.123 The focus of this type of audit missed several key issues on which US foreign policy was deserving of negative censure. First, the distinction between explicitly endorsing violent rebellion – and undertaking provocative measures that were likely to spark a revolt without specifically demanding it – was largely irrelevant in the aftermath of the bloodshed in Hungary. Even though the US never openly called for revolution in Hungary, the intensive anti-Soviet propaganda campaign had been ratcheted up since Khrushchev’s secret speech, and then intensified during the Polish October. This had certainly energised the uprising. US policy was therefore illjudged. American actions had contributed to the outbreak of violence in the Soviet bloc, although there had never been any intention to militarily assist a revolution there. Second, the key point from the Hungarian perspective was that US propaganda had been interpreted as inciting rebellion. The rebels had expected the US to send military aid to Hungary once the revolution started – and they were demoralised (and ill-equipped) when Washington refused to assist them. Therefore, the US deserved to shoulder some of the blame for fuelling the upheaval. The US position of non-intervention had been misinterpreted by ordinary Hungarians, because the impression created by the intensive anti-Soviet propaganda campaign was that the US would in fact intercede. Although American culpability on this point was acknowledged at lower levels of the US government, it was not accepted publicly by Eisenhower or the Dulles brothers.124 Third, Eisenhower’s attempt to absolve US policy by arguing that there was no explicit American call to arms of the Hungarians was a distraction from a much more serious point. US foreign policy since Eisenhower had entered office had been woefully inconsistent during every crisis behind the iron curtain. Although American impotence in the Soviet bloc was not Eisenhower’s fault, the ongoing pretence of US power and influence in Eastern Europe both on a public and policy level was primarily down to Eisenhower and the Dulles brothers.

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Richard Bissell recollected that the Hungarian Revolution finally brought home to the CIA the reality that rollback through US support of indigenous resistance was unfeasible: Either you give assistance and get bloody results, or you don’t and appear weak and mislead your friends. I don’t remember any lucid conversations. I remember a lot of hand wringing. No one had thought it through.125 The admission that US foreign policy behind the iron curtain was misconceived also renders irrelevant the charges about Suez being a distraction. It is true that Suez diverted Washington’s attention away from Hungary. Suez was its primary focus because that crisis involved three of its close allies in a key strategic area for US foreign policy. Ultimately, however, the fact that Suez coincided with the Hungarian uprising made no difference to the US position because, regardless of Suez, Eisenhower was incapable of intervening in any meaningful way to prevent the Soviet military action in Hungary. A lack of capabilities short of war, rather than the distraction of Suez, determined the American response to the Hungarian Revolution. ***** When considering the points of contention that surround the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, it is important to maintain a sense of proportion and perspective regarding the role played by the US in that episode. It is undoubtedly true that overwhelming blame for the rebellion and the terrible violence that ensued should be levelled at the Kremlin and the Hungarian communist leadership that was loyal to Moscow rather than to its own people. The US played very much a secondary role in the whole affair, but this does not mean that the Eisenhower administration should escape without criticism for its part in agitating the revolution, and more broadly for pursuing an illconceived and ineffective foreign policy towards the Soviet bloc. Even though American psychological warfare in the mid-1950s did not explicitly call for a full-scale revolution against Soviet-communist

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power, US propaganda certainly fuelled the Hungarian uprising and the misperception that the US would step in. Several investigations were conducted by the American government after the revolt in Hungary to clarify the US role in it. The broad conclusions reached were that RFE and Voice of America had in general broadcast a moderate message during the unrest. This did not hide the fact that ‘straight news reporting’ – such as the wide coverage given to Gomulka’s success in Poland – was inherently provocative in nature and tone if not explicitly in the language that was employed. The Eisenhower administration soothed its bruised self-image by claiming that its propaganda campaign in Hungary had been ‘consistent with policy’.126 This evasion of culpability did not address the fact that US policy itself was inconsistent and strategically flawed. The Bruce-Lovett report, released late in 1956, provided a more critical and self-reflexive postscript: The supporters of the 1948 decision to launch this government on a positive [psychological and political warfare] program could not possibly have foreseen the ramifications of the operations which have resulted from it [. . .] Should not someone, somewhere, in an authoritative position in our government, on a continuing basis, be counting the immediate costs of disappointments, [. . .] calculating the impacts on our international position, and keeping in mind the long range wisdom of activities which have entailed our virtual abandonment of the international ‘golden rule,’ and which, if successful to the degree claimed for them, are responsible in a great measure for stirring up the turmoil and raising the doubts about us that exist in many countries of the world today? What of the effects on our present alliances? What will happen tomorrow?127 Following Moscow’s suppression of the Hungarian Revolution, communist power was firmly reconsolidated throughout the Soviet bloc. In Hungary itself, Ka´da´r cracked down on any remnants of dissent in the aftermath of the upheaval. Then, in June 1958, Radio Moscow

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announced that several leading Hungarian national communists, including Imre Nagy and Pal Maleter, had been executed. Eisenhower and Dulles were left with no option other than to issue public rebukes against the Soviet Union for its brutality.128 Gomulka was allowed to retain his power in Poland, but only on the basis that Polish communism remained closely aligned to Soviet interests. It was clear that the crushing of the Hungarian uprising marked the end of the road for Khrushchev’s efforts to readjust the Soviet–satellite relationships on a more liberal basis – and the return to a hard-line policy in the Kremlin. The US government went into its shell over Hungary and refused to publicly accept any responsibility or blame for the carnage inflicted by the Soviet Army against Hungarian civilians. But the violent and fruitless episode did result in the overhaul of US policy and the final demise of aggressive US political warfare operations against the Soviet bloc. For instance, in May 1958 the NSC released a new statement of US foreign policy towards Eastern Europe, which recommended a much more conciliatory and diplomatic approach than had been enshrined before the Hungarian Revolution. Under NSC 5811/1 the US should continue to publicly assert the right of the Eastern Europeans to freedom, self-determination and representative governments, but Washington would now unequivocally seek to foster peaceful evolutionary change throughout the Soviet bloc. US policy now emphasised nurturing closer economic, cultural, educational, social and religious ties with Eastern Europe. The US would also seek negotiated settlements with Moscow over mutual troop withdrawals from Europe and the reunification of Germany.129 Although American diplomacy was ultimately unable to resolve the core Cold War question of Germany’s status until the final collapse of communism across Eastern and Central Europe in the late 1980s, after the Hungarian Revolution Eisenhower’s government returned to many of the ideas that Kennan had espoused in his redundant Program A initiative ten years before. One notable component of Kennan’s earlier plans, aggressive political warfare, was now quietly discarded.

CONCLUSION

The violent upheaval on the streets of Budapest in late 1956 made it clear once and for all that Soviet-communist power could not be retracted by harnessing limited US political warfare operations and defenceless local populations in areas that were viewed by the Kremlin as vital to Soviet security. In the period 1945–56 the US desire to ‘liberate’ Eastern Europe from Soviet-communist power never moved beyond aspiration into full-scale commitment. As a result, the capabilities thrown at the endeavour never expanded beyond political warfare to military intervention, although the Central Intelligence Agency’s covert operations behind the iron curtain did encompass quasi-military guerrilla warfare activities during this period. Throughout these years, Washington failed to properly assess whether US goals in Eastern Europe were realistic, consistent and achievable. As a result, the Truman and Eisenhower governments continued to aspire to roll back Soviet-communist power when no strategy existed to achieve this objective and woefully inadequate capabilities were employed. Instead, Washington became bogged down in policy-level semantic debates over how to tread the ‘fine line’ between rebellion and gradualist ‘passive resistance’, as had been demarcated by NSC 174 in December 1953.1 The Hungarian Revolution illustrated that this boundary had been overstepped, but there had been warning signs before the Hungarian uprising that indigenous hostility to Soviet domination could not be restrained

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once it had been unleashed, in part by American propaganda. The East German and Polish riots were testament to this. The exact level of American responsibility for fanning the flames of revolution in Hungary is difficult to quantify, but two things are certain: first, that the US did bear some responsibility for fuelling the uprising; second, that the Soviet and loyal Hungarian communist leaderships were overwhelmingly responsible for the violent events that occurred in October and November 1956. The Hungarian Revolution also revealed that the US had pointedly failed to find a strategic solution to its ultimate foreign policy goal in Europe – of providing security, free markets and open political systems on a pan-European basis. Although no strategic solution was ever found, despite the efforts of George Kennan in particular, the US was also unable and unwilling to dispel its Cold War aspiration to bring Eastern Europe into the ‘free world’ community. Time and again during this era Washington failed ‘to turn principle into programme’.2 In the early Cold War, US national security strategy was overwhelmingly focused on Western Europe. However, questions remain over the approach and objectives of that strategy. For example, the European Recovery Program is generally considered by historians as the defensive mainstay of the American approach from 1947– 8. The ERP built up Western Europe by contributing to its recovery and containing Soviet expansion. But it is possible to read the Marshall Plan in a much wider sense. Not only was it an economic and political initiative to shore up Western Europe, it also played a key part in a nascent political warfare approach to the continent. Cold War antagonisms between East and West were confirmed – but not caused – by the ERP and the subsequent consolidation of positions of strength on each side of the iron curtain. Just as importantly, however, the Marshall Plan very quickly became part of a wider debate among senior and working-level policymakers over how Washington should prosecute the Cold War. Initially the Truman administration focused on the mechanics for waging the Cold War with the creation of the national security state and approval of NSC 4-A and NSC 10/2. The adoption of

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psychological– political warfare directives was meant to settle bureaucratic disputes, although wrangling over the authority and responsibility for covert operations rumbled on in the 1950s between the CIA, Office of Policy Coordination, Psychological Strategy Board and the State Department. NSC 10/2 and later NSC 10/5 authorised the machinery for American agencies to implement propaganda and economic measures as well as establishing a covert political warfare arm. But although these political warfare directives set up the mechanics for implementing US foreign policy, they did not settle the fundamental question of strategic feasibility. While political warfare activities complemented the strategic approach in Western Europe through the Economic Cooperation Administration, there was no comparable strategic resolution over the American approach towards the Soviet bloc. Therefore, by mid-1948 the political warfare machinery was established to potentially link the American approach to Europe on a unified basis. But American policymakers never fully developed that connection. The strategic approach soon diverged between Eastern and Western Europe. From early 1948 an enclave strategy was explored by Kennan’s Policy Planning Staff at the State Department. This was based on using a political warfare capability in harmony with economic, diplomatic and military initiatives to bring about an end to the Cold War before it really began. The PPS’s incipient strategic initiative was almost immediately undercut by the main thrust of US foreign policy that favoured the more predictable approach of building preponderant American power by concentrating on Western Europe and the containment of Soviet power to the East. Although political warfare and rollback were now cut adrift from mainstream US policy, they were not abandoned. This in turn exacerbated their enclave status. This notion that US political warfare against the Soviet bloc was an enclave strategy calls for a modification of the recent wave of scholarship that has stressed the importance of the US ‘rollback’ campaign in the early Cold War.3 In essence, this book demonstrates that although political warfare was quite a large undertaking – and it certainly should not be ignored by historians – it never encompassed

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the main thrust of US policy in the Cold War. In fact political warfare was at odds with mainstream US policy after 1948. Indeed, it is striking that no documentary evidence has come to light indicating that Truman himself ever interjected into the political warfare debates and policy formulations. Eisenhower was more vocal on the pursuit of rollback, but ultimately both he and John Foster Dulles were restrained and cautious on this matter when matters came to a head. Arguably then, there was a lack of high-level leadership over the US political warfare campaign. It is therefore not really surprising that the programme lacked strategic clarity. Indeed, it is damning of itself to note that we are still unsure, even today, whether Truman hoped to destabilise or actually liberate the Soviet bloc through this campaign. His fingerprints are only to be found when he signed off National Security Council papers such as NSC 4-A and NSC 10/2 authorising the political warfare programme to go ahead. It is clear from the body of evidence that the Truman and Eisenhower administrations failed to move significantly beyond the aspiration of liberating the Soviet bloc from communist influence. Grand strategy was ambiguous and broad in policy papers such as NSC 20/4, NSC 68 and NSC 162/2. These policy statements served no practical use to the OPC and other operational agencies in terms of providing specific or broad strategic guidance. Strategic planning broke down when it came to implementing rollback activities against communist regimes in Eastern Europe. The lack of a feasible strategy was exacerbated by the secondary problem that the bureaucracy also tended to be dysfunctional. Yugoslavia’s expulsion from the Cominform in 1948 offered new hope that the peaceful retraction of Soviet power was possible. But the Tito– Stalin rift made no impression on the viability of modifying Soviet power elsewhere in Eastern Europe by measures short of war. Although Truman and Eisenhower both gradually acknowledged that American strategic aims would not be served by fostering Titoism and nationalist ‘communist heresies’ amongst the Eastern bloc states, these interim goals were retained because of a lack of viable alternative strategic options.

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The lack of a unified pan-European strategic framework for US policy left the approach in the Soviet bloc riddled with contradictions. American policymakers unanimously agreed that the US must avoid a direct war with Russia unless it involved protecting vital US interests. It was recognised in policy statements that Eastern Europe was of fundamental strategic importance to the Soviet Union but only of marginal strategic value to the US. Nevertheless, sections of the US government, in particular at operational levels, continued to press for the liberation of the region despite the obvious military requirement to achieve this goal. Moreover, aggressive political warfare measures were wholly irreconcilable with moves towards diplomacy and de´tente in the 1950s, yet these discordant elements were retained. Rollback in the East was simply incompatible with containment in the West. As a result, disorder prevailed over design in the development of a coherent American strategy to peacefully retract Soviet-communist power from the East. The strategic vacuum was filled by the operational arm of the government, and in particular the OPC. Washington sanctioned political warfare capabilities that allowed the OPC to exceed cautious policy guidelines in the absence of a clear strategic mandate. Frank Wisner’s organisation took matters into its own hands and rapidly emerged as a de facto policymaking body through its pursuit of operations in the field. In particular, this trend was accelerated because of pressure from the military to engage in guerrilla warfare operations and the blurring of normal distinctions between peace and war that characterised the early Cold War. Failure to harness these types of activities to a viable strategy undermined them from the outset. No decisive strategic overhaul took place under Truman or Eisenhower, despite some effort by the Psychological Strategy Board and a handful of disgruntled political warfare veterans to address this towards the end of Truman’s incumbency. Without a viable strategy the US political warfare programme against the Soviet bloc that was launched in 1948 by the Truman administration was futile and illjudged. The failure to rigorously evaluate the campaign also undercut any commitment to seek out more feasible alternative courses in

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order to mediate relations with the Soviet Union, including diplomatic initiatives such as Program A to unify Germany. This legacy of strategic incoherence towards the Soviet bloc was passed to Eisenhower’s incoming Republican administration. Despite a rhetorical commitment to liberate the Soviet bloc, it also struggled to reconcile American capabilities and aspirations. Over the longer term, once rollback had been unequivocally proven untenable by the Hungarian Revolution, US regional policy towards Eastern Europe was placed firmly on an ‘evolutionary’ rather than ‘revolutionary’ footing. This marked the abandonment of coercive efforts through political warfare to instead favour more moderate approaches. Matching the Soviet move towards ‘peaceful coexistence’ in the post-Stalin era, in the West the explicit aim of de´tente and ostpolitik by the 1970s was to soften and accommodate communism rather than to defeat it. ***** The formation of the US national security state in the late 1940s was in many ways unprecedented, in terms of expanding the machinery of American foreign policy to underpin a worldwide involvement. But the global scope of American policy did not automatically stimulate a sound and consistent framework linking together operations, organisation and strategy. Valuable lessons from the American experience in Europe in the early Cold War can therefore still be learned. The CIA’s political warfare capability was developed primarily to target the Soviet bloc at the outset of the Cold War but it was retained by Washington long after the abandonment of the rollback campaign. By the 1950s political warfare was also being employed by the US government far beyond the borders of Europe, as the Cold War shifted and expanded from the ‘core’ to the ‘periphery’. Ever since those earliest days of the Cold War, the executive branch has repeatedly sanctioned ‘covert’ political warfare interventions in countries as diverse as Iran, Guatemala, the Philippines, Cuba, Vietnam and countless other places. In hindsight it is difficult to claim that the vast majority of these actions have produced anything

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other than overwhelmingly negative results. It therefore remains pertinent for historians to examine the Agency’s expansion in light of the strategic incoherence that accompanied its ‘golden age’.4 Even now, long after the end of the Cold War, American policymakers continue to face a dilemma more pertinent than the ideological challenge of validating American superiority over perceived adversaries. The aspiration to project power abroad necessitates a justification of that assertion of power. Much more importantly, for foreign policy to be truly effective it requires a sound strategy that reconciles a nation’s capabilities with a clear set of objectives. Therefore, the most important challenge for US foreign policy to this day, as we have seen in Afghanistan and Iraq, and in North Africa and the Middle East more recently during the ‘Arab Spring’, is to define a coherent approach that supports Washington’s global aspirations.

NOTES

Introduction 1 Nicolas Bethell, The Great Betrayal: The Untold Story of Kim Philby’s Biggest Coup (London, 1984), pp. 191– 2. 2 Johanna Granville ‘Reactions to the Events of 1956: New Findings from the Budapest and Warsaw Archives’, Journal of Contemporary History 38 (2003), p. 271. 3 Center for the Study of Intelligence [hereafter CSI], The Origin and Development of the CIA in the Administration of Harry S. Truman (Washington, 1995), p. 57; Len Scott, ‘Secret Intelligence, Covert Action and Clandestine Diplomacy’, Intelligence and National Security, Vol. 19, No. 2 (Summer 2004), p. 328. 4 Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones, ‘Why was the CIA Established in 1947?’ in Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones and Christopher Andrew (eds.), Eternal Vigilance?: 50 Years of the CIA (London, 1997), pp. 32 – 3. 5 Sarah-Jane Corke, US Covert Operations and Cold War Strategy: Truman, Secret Warfare and the CIA (London, 2008), pp. 5 – 6. Corke’s allusion to a Donovan tradition refers to the notion of engrained institutional tendencies inherited by the CIA from previous organisations. Such embedded patterns of behaviour would include operational autonomy, action-taking rather than planning and deliberation, use of unconventional and subversive methods, and the expansion of authorised mandates. 6 See Stephen Long, ‘The Origins of the CIA and the Non-Strategic Development of US Political Warfare, 1946–7’ 49th Parallel, Volume 24, (Spring 2010), pp. 1–27. 7 NSC 10/2 ‘National Security Council Directive on Office of Special Projects’, 18 June 1948, in Michael Warner (ed.), CIA Cold War Records: The CIA under Harry Truman (Washington, 1994), document 43. 8 Daniel Yergin, Shattered Peace: the Origins of the Cold War and the National Security State (Boston, 1977). 9 Amy B. Zegart, Flawed by Design: The Evolution of the CIA, JCS and NSC (Stanford, 1999).

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10 Yergin, Shattered Peace, p. 6. For discussions of the orthodox-revisionist debate see Sarah-Jane Corke, ‘History, Historian and the Naming of Foreign Policy: A Postmodern Reflection on American Strategic Thinking during the Truman Administration’, Intelligence and National Security, Vol. 16, No. 3 (Autumn 2001), pp. 146– 65; Michael Cox and Caroline Kennedy-Pipe, ‘The Tragedy of American Diplomacy? Rethinking the Marshall Plan’, Journal of Cold War Studies, Vol. 7, No. 1 (Winter 2005), pp. 97 – 134; Robert James Maddox, The New Left and the Origins of the Cold War (Princeton, 1973); Charles S. Maier, ‘The Marshall Plan and the Division of Europe’, Journal of Cold War Studies, Vol. 7, No. 1 (Winter 2005), pp. 168–74. 11 Maier, ‘The Marshall Plan and the Division of Europe’, pp. 168, 173. 12 For example, John Lewis Gaddis, Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of Postwar American National Security Policy (Oxford, 2005); idem., We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History (Oxford, 1997); Lloyd Gardner, Architects of Illusion: Men and Ideas in American Foreign Policy, 1941– 1949 (Chicago, 1970); Michael Hogan, A Cross of Iron: Harry S. Truman and the Origins of the National Security State, 1945– 1954 (Cambridge, 1998); Walter Lafeber, America, Russia, and the Cold War, 1945– 1992 (London and New York, 1997); Melvyn P. Leffler, A Preponderance of Power: National Security, the Truman Administration, and the Cold War (Stanford, 1992); Thomas Paterson, Meeting the Communist Threat: Truman to Reagan (Oxford and New York, 1988); William Appleman Williams, The Tragedy of American Diplomacy (New York, 1972). 13 Gaddis, We Now Know; Leffler, A Preponderance of Power. 14 Joshua Botts, ‘“Nothing to Seek and . . . Nothing to Defend”: George F. Kennan’s Core Values and American Foreign Policy, 1938– 1993’, Diplomatic History, Vol. 30, No. 5 (November 2006), p. 864. 15 Richard J. Aldrich, The Hidden Hand: Britain, America and Cold War Secret Intelligence (London, 2002); Christopher Andrew, For the President’s Eyes Only: Secret Intelligence and the American Presidency from Washington to Bush (London, 1996); David M. Barrett, The CIA and Congress: the Untold Story from Truman to Kennedy (Lawrence, 2005); Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones, The CIA and American Democracy (London and New Haven, 1989); John Ranelagh, The Agency: the Rise and Decline of the CIA (Sevenoaks, 1988); David F. Rudgers, Creating the Secret State: the Origins of the Central Intelligence Agency, 1943– 1947 (Lawrence, 2000); L. Britt Snider, The Agency and the Hill: CIA’s Relationship with Congress, 1946– 2004 (Washington, 2008). 16 Walter L. Hixson, Parting the Curtain: Propaganda, Culture, and the Cold War, 1945– 1961 (Basingstoke, 1997); Kenneth Osgood, Total Cold War: Eisenhower’s Secret Propaganda Battle at Home and Abroad (Lawrence, Kansas, 2006); Frances Stonor Saunders, Who Paid the Piper? The CIA and the Cultural Cold War (London, 1999); Giles Scott-Smith, The Politics of Apolitical Culture: the Congress for Cultural Freedom, the CIA and Postwar American Hegemony (London, 2002), idem., ‘The “Masterpieces of the Twentieth Century” Festival and the Congress for Cultural Freedom: Origins and Consolidation 1947–52’, Intelligence and National Security, Vol. 15, No. 1

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(Spring 2000), pp. 121–43; Michael Warner, ‘Origins of the Congress for Cultural Freedom, 1949–50’, Studies in Intelligence, Vol. 38, No. 5 (1995), pp. 89–98; Hugh Wilford, ‘Playing the CIA’s Tune? The New Leader and the Cultural Cold War’, Diplomatic History, Vol. 27, No. 1 (January 2003), pp. 15–34. 17 Jeffrey Burds, The Early Cold War in Soviet West Ukraine, 1944–1948 (Pittsburgh, 2001); Corke, US Covert Operations; Michael W. Dravis, ‘Storming Fortress Albania: American Covert Operations in Microcosm, 1949–54’, Intelligence and National Security, Vol. 7, No. 4 (1992), pp. 425–42; Peter Grose, Operation Rollback: America’s Secret War Behind the iron curtain (Boston, 2000); Burton Hersh, The Old Boys: the American Elite and the Origins of the CIA (New York, 1992); Beatrice Heuser, Western ‘Containment’ Policies in the Cold War: the Yugoslav Case, 1948–53 (London and New York, 1989); Stephen F. Knott, Secret and Sanctioned: Covert Operations and the American Presidency (Oxford, 1996); W. Scott Lucas, Freedom’s War: the US Crusade against the Soviet Union 1945–1956 (Manchester, 1999); idem., ‘the Myth of Leadership: Dwight Eisenhower and the Quest for Liberation’, in Constantine Pagedas and Thomas Otte (eds.), Personalities, War and Diplomacy (1997), pp. 158–85; W. Scott Lucas and Kaeten Mistry, ‘Illusions of Coherence: George F. Kennan, U.S. Strategy and Political Warfare in the Early Cold War, 1946–1950’, Diplomatic History, Vol. 33, No. 1 (January 2009), pp. 39–66; Gregory Mitrovich, Undermining the Kremlin: America’s Strategy to Subvert the Soviet Bloc, 1947–1956 (London and Ithaca, 2000); David F. Rudgers, ‘The Origins of Covert Action’, Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 35, No. 2 (2000), pp. 249–62; Christopher Simpson, Blowback: America’s Recruitment of Nazis and its Effects on the Cold War (New York, 1988); Michael Warner, ‘The CIA’s Office of Policy Coordination: From NSC 10/2 to NSC 68’, Intelligence and Counterintelligence, Vol. 11, No. 2 (1998), pp. 211–20; Tim Weiner, Legacy of Ashes: The History of CIA (New York, 2007); Robin W. Winks, Cloak and Gown: Scholars in the Secret War, 1939–1961 (New Haven and London, 1987).

Chapter 1

Holding the Line

1 ‘American Relations with the Soviet Union: A Report to the President by the Special Counsel to the President’, September 1946, Arthur Krock, Memoirs: Sixty Years on the Firing Line (New York, 1968), pp. 419– 82. 2 CIG Directive No. 9 ‘Development of Intelligence on USSR’, undated, RG 218, Leahy Papers, Box 21, National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, Maryland (NARA); draft CIG directive, ‘Development of Intelligence on U.S.S.R.’, 29 April 1946, Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), Emergence of the Intelligence Establishment, 1945–1950, (Washington, 1996), document 148. 3 CIG, ORE 1, ‘Soviet Foreign and Military Policy’, 23 July 1946, Vandenberg to Truman, 24 August 1946, in Michael Warner (ed.), CIA Cold War Records: The CIA under Harry Truman (Washington, 1994), documents 15 and 18.

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4 Sarah-Jane Corke, US Covert Operations and Cold War Strategy: Truman, Secret Warfare and the CIA (London, 2008), pp. 21 – 2; Burton Hersh, The Old Boys: The American Elite and the Origins of the CIA (New York, 1992), p. 178. 5 Vandenberg to National Intelligence Authority (NIA), ‘Special Consultant to the Director of Central Intelligence’, 27 June 1946, RG 218, Leahy Papers, Box 21, NARA. 6 George Kennan, ‘Containment 40 Years Later: Containment Then and Now’, Foreign Affairs, (Spring 1987), pp. 885– 90. 7 Kennan to Byrnes, 22 February 1946, FRUS, Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union, 1946, Volume VI (Washington, 1969), pp. 696– 709. 8 Kennan, ‘Containment 40 Years Later’. 9 ‘American Relations with the Soviet Union’, pp. 419– 82, Clark Clifford Oral History, Harry S. Truman Library, Independence Missouri (hereafter HSTL), pp. 374– 7. 10 Philip A. Karber and Jerald A. Combs, ‘The United States, NATO, and the Soviet Threat to Western Europe: Military Estimates and Policy Options, 1945– 1963’, Diplomatic History, Vol. 22, No. 3 (Summer 1998), pp. 399– 429. 11 Eduard Mark, ‘The War Scare of 1946 and its Consequences’, Diplomatic History, Vol. 21, No. 3 (Summer 1997), pp. 387– 8, 398– 9, 406, 410– 11; Melvyn P. Leffler, A Preponderance of Power: National Security, the Truman Administration, and the Cold War (Stanford, 1992), pp. 111– 14. 12 Corke, US Covert Operations, pp. 10, 25. 13 Edward Lilly, ‘The Development of American Psychological Operations 1945– 1951’, 19 December 1951, United States Declassified Document Reference System (henceforth DDRS) (Woodbridge, 1994), 35. 14 SWNCC 304/1 ‘Psychological Warfare’, 10 December 1946, RG 218, Leahy Papers, Box 22, NARA; SANACC 304/15 ‘Review of SANACC Studies Pertaining to Psychological Warfare’, undated, RG 59, PPS, Box 11A, NARA; Lilly, ‘The Development of American Psychological Operations 1945– 1951’, 19 December 1951, DDRS; ‘The Postwar Development of Psychological Warfare and Special Operations’, undated, DDRS. 15 Lilly, ‘The Development of American Psychological Operations 1945– 1951’, pp. 43 – 4. 16 NSC 4-A, ‘Psychological Operations’, 17 December 1947, NSC 10/2, ‘Office of Special Projects’, 18 June 1948, in Warner, The CIA under Harry Truman, documents 35 and 43. 17 Marshall speech, Harvard University, 5 June 1947: http://www.america.gov/st/ texttrans-english/2007/May/20,07052,1153224MVyelwarC0.46,75867.html (accessed June 2012). 18 Melvyn P. Leffler, ‘The United States and the Strategic Dimensions of the Marshall Plan’, Diplomatic History, Vol. 12, No. 3 (Summer 1988), p. 283. 19 Clark Clifford Oral History, HSTL, pp. 213–4, 253–5. 20 Paul H. Nitze, From Hiroshima to Glasnost: At the Center of Decision: A Memoir (London, 1990), p. 48.

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21 Kennan memorandum, 16 May 1947, United States Department of State, FRUS, the British Commonwealth; Europe, 1947, Volume III (Washington, 1972), p. 220. 22 Dean Acheson, Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department (London, 1970), p. 232. 23 John D. Hickerson Oral History, HSTL. 24 Charles S. Maier, ‘The Marshall Plan and the Division of Europe’, Journal of Cold War Studies, Vol. 7, No. 1 (Winter 2005), p. 172. 25 Matthews to Marshall, 1 July 1947, FRUS, Eastern Europe; the Soviet Union, 1947, Volume IV (Washington, 1972), pp. 329– 33. 26 Vladislav M. Zubok, A Failed Empire: the Soviet Union in the Cold War from Stalin to Gorbachev (Chapel Hill, 2007), p. 73. 27 Carolyn Woods Eisenberg, Drawing the Line: the American Decision to Divide Germany, 1944– 1949 (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 348– 61. 28 Caffery to Marshall, 17 October 1947, FRUS, 1947, III, p. 778. 29 Kennan, ‘Situation with Respect to European Recovery Program’, 4 September 1947; Lovett to Truman, 6 September, 1947; Advisory Steering Committee meeting, 9 September 1947, FRUS, 1947, III, pp. 397– 405, 410– 11 and 470. Also see Wilson D. Miscamble, George F. Kennan and the Making of American Foreign Policy, 1947– 1950 (Oxford and Princeton, 1992), p. 65; Robert A. Pollard, Economic Security and the Origins of the Cold War 1945– 1950 (New York and Guildford, 1985), pp. 146–9. 30 W. Scott Lucas, Freedom’s War: The US Crusade against the Soviet Union 1945–1956 (Manchester, 1999), p. 40. 31 Walter Millis (ed.), The Forrestal Diaries: The Inner History of the Cold War (London, 1952), p. 274. 32 Lucas, Freedom’s War, p. 43. 33 Harry Rositzke, The CIA’s Secret Operations: Espionage, Counterespionage, and Covert Action (Boulder, 1988), pp. 160– 1. 34 Bohlen to Lovett, ‘Unaccounted funds to assist non-Communist forces in Europe’, 6 September 1947, RG 59, Records of Ambassador Charles E. Bohlen, 1942– 71, Box 5, NARA. 35 Townsend Hoopes and Douglas Brinkley, Driven Patriot: the Life and Times of James Forrestal (New York, 1992), p. 311. 36 Center for the Study of Intelligence (CSI), The Origin and Development of the CIA in the Administration of Harry S. Truman (Washington, 1995), p. 65. 37 Rositzke, The CIA’s Secret Operations, p. 186; Ray S. Cline, Secrets, Spies and Scholars: Blueprint of the Essential CIA (Washington, 1977), pp. 97 – 100. 38 Michael Warner, ‘The CIA’s Office of Policy Coordination: From NSC 10/2 to NSC 68’, Intelligence and Counterintelligence, Vol. 11, No. 2 (1998), p. 212. 39 United States Senate, Foreign and Military Intelligence, Book I, Final Report of the Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities (Washington, 1976), p. 494.

NOTES TO PAGES 29 –33

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40 Anna Karalekas, ‘History of the Central Intelligence Agency’ in William Leary (ed.), The Central Intelligence Agency: History and Documents (University, 1984), pp. 40 – 1. 41 Houston to Hillenkoetter, ‘CIA Authority to Perform Propaganda and Commando Type Functions’, 25 September 1947, FRUS, Emergence of the Intelligence Establishment, 1945– 1950, document 241. 42 D. H. Berger, ‘The Use of Covert Paramilitary Activity as a Policy Tool: An Analysis of Operations Conducted by the United States Central Intelligence Agency, 1949– 1951’, (Federation of American Scientists), http://www.fas.org/i rp/eprint/berger.htm (accessed May 2012). 43 PPS/8, ‘United States Policy in the Event of the Establishment of Communist Power in Greece’, 18 September 1947; PPS/9, ‘Possible Action by the U.S. to Assist the Italian Government in the Event of Communist Seizure of North Italy and the Establishment of an Italian Communist “Government” in that Area’, 24 September 1947, in Anna Kasten Nelson (ed.), The State Department Policy Planning Staff Papers, Volume I, 1947– 1949 (New York, 1983), pp. 91 – 107; CIA 1 ‘Review of the World Situation as it Relates to the Security of the United States’, 26 September 1947, Truman Papers, PSF, Box 176, HSTL. 44 Millis, The Forrestal Diaries, pp. 309– 10. 45 PPS minutes, 25 September 1947, RG 59, Records of the Policy Planning Staff 1947– 1953, Box 32, NARA. 46 CIA 1 ‘Review of the World Situation as it Relates to the Security of the United States’. 47 Arthur B. Darling, The Central Intelligence Agency: An Instrument of Government to 1950 (London; University Park, 1990), pp. 253– 4. 48 Arthur B. Darling, The Central Intelligence Agency, pp. 252– 3. 49 Mosely to Marshall, 6 October 1947, RG 59, SWNCC Case Files LM 54 Roll 26, NARA; Mosely to Lovett, 15 October 1947, FRUS, Emergence of the Intelligence Establishment, 1945 – 1950, document 242; Subcommittee to SWNCC, ‘Psychological Warfare’, (undated), RG 59, SWNCC Case Files LM 54 Roll 26, NARA. 50 Hillenkoetter to SANACC, 22 October 1947, Pixtou memorandum, undated/ transmitted 20 October 1947, FRUS, Emergence of the Intelligence Establishment, 1945– 1950, documents 244 and 243. 51 Caffery (Paris) to State, 5 October 1947; Cannon (Belgrade) to State, 6 October 1947; Griffis (Warsaw) to State, 7 October 1947: RG 218, Leahy Chairman’s File, Box 19, NARA. 52 See, for example, three cables sent from Caffery to Marshall dated 17 and 30 October and 3 November 1947, in FRUS, 1947, III, pp. 778, 795–7 and 797–8. 53 Kennan to Lovett, 6 October 1947, RG 59, PPS, Box 8, NARA. 54 Bohlen draft memorandum ‘Preliminary analysis of announcement of revival of Eur Comintern’, 7 October 1947, RG 59, Bohlen Records, Box 7, NARA. 55 Jonathan Haslam, Russia’s Cold War: From the October Revolution to the Fall of the Wall (New Haven, 2011), pp. 87– 94.

302

NOTES TO PAGES 34 –39

56 ORE 21/1 ‘Probable Soviet Reactions to a US Aid Program for Italy’, 5 August 1947, Truman Papers, PSF, Box 214, HSTL; CIA 2 ‘Review of the World Situation as it Relates to the Security of the United States’, 14 November 1947, Truman Papers, PSF, Box 176, HSTL. 57 CIA Special Evaluation No. 21 ‘Implications of the new Communist Information Bureau’, 13 October 1947, Truman Papers, NSC, Box 4, HSTL. 58 CIA Special Evaluation No 22 ‘Deterioration of the Communist Political Position in Western Europe’, 7 November, 1947, Truman Papers, NSC, Box 4, HSTL. 59 Roy Godson, Dirty Tricks or Trump Cards: US Covert Action and Counterintelligence (New Brunswick, 2001), pp. 31 – 2, FRUS, 1947, III, pp. 933– 5. 60 Robin W. Winks, Cloak and Gown: Scholars in the Secret War, 1939– 1961 (New Haven and London, 1987), pp. 380– 1. 61 Pollard, Economic Security, p. 73. 62 Trevor Barnes, ‘The Secret Cold War: The C.I.A. and American Foreign Policy in Europe, 1946– 1956’, The Historical Journal, Part I, Vol. 24, No. 2 (June 1981), p. 413; Tom Braden, ‘I’m Glad the CIA is “Immoral”’, The Saturday Evening Post (20 May 1967). 63 Giles Scott-Smith, ‘The “Masterpieces of the Twentieth Century” Festival and the Congress for Cultural Freedom: Origins and Consolidation 1947– 52’, Intelligence and National Security, Vol. 15, No. 1 (Spring 2000), p. 123. 64 SANACC memorandum, 24 October 1947, RG 59, SWNCC Case Files LM 54 Roll 26, NARA. 65 Hillenkoetter was referring specifically to the creation of the OPC in 1948 but his point was equally applicable six months earlier – that resistance was futile when the fledgling CIA was sandwiched between two government heavyweights. Darling, The Central Intelligence Agency, pp. 253– 4. 66 SANACC 304/10 ‘Psychological Warfare’, 3 November 1947, RG 59, SWNCC Case Files LM 54 Roll 26, NARA. 67 Lay to Souers, 3 November 1947, FRUS, Emergence of the Intelligence Establishment, 1945–1950, document 246. Also see Darling, The Central Intelligence Agency, p. 255. 68 NIA Directive No. 5, ‘Functions of the Director of Central Intelligence’, 8 July 1946, FRUS, Emergence of the Intelligence Establishment, 1945–1950, document 160. 69 Mosely to Lovett, 15 October 1947, FRUS, Emergence of the Intelligence Establishment, 1945– 1950, document 242. 70 Souers to Forrestal, 24 October 1947, FRUS, Emergence of the Intelligence Establishment, 1945– 1950, document 245. 71 Ohly to Truman, 26 October 1947, RG 59, SWNCC Case Files LM 54 Roll 26, NARA. 72 Wright to Hillenkoetter, 4 November 1947, FRUS, Emergence of the Intelligence Establishment, 1945– 1950, document 247. 73 Kennan to Lovett, 31 October 1947, RG 59, PPS, Box 33, NARA. 74 Darling, The Central Intelligence Agency, p. 256.

NOTES TO PAGES 39 – 44

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75 NSC meeting, 14 November 1947, FRUS, Emergence of the Intelligence Establishment, 1945– 1950, document 250. 76 Wright to Hillenkoetter, 4 November 1947, FRUS, Emergence of the Intelligence Establishment, 1945– 1950, document 248. 77 PPS/13, ‘Resume˙ of World Situation’, 6 November 1947, Nelson, PPS Papers I, pp. 129– 36. 78 Footnotes to PPS/13, FRUS, General; The United Nations, 1947, Volume I (Washington, 1973), pp. 770– 1. 79 Millis, The Forrestal Diaries, pp. 326– 8. 80 George Kennan, ‘What is Policy?’ 18 December 1947 in Giles D. Harlow and George C. Maerz (eds.), Measures Short of War: The George F. Kennan Lectures at the National War College 1946– 47 (Washington, 1991), pp. 295–318. 81 Darling, The Central Intelligence Agency, p. 248. 82 Wright to Hillenkoetter, 4 November 1947, FRUS, Emergence of the Intelligence Establishment, 1945– 1950, document 247. 83 Lucas, Freedom’s War, p. 47. 84 NSC meeting, 14 November 1947, FRUS, Emergence of the Intelligence Establishment, 1945– 1950, document 250. 85 NSC 4 ‘Coordination of Foreign Information Measures’, 17 December 1947, FRUS, Emergence of the Intelligence Establishment, 1945– 1950, document 252. 86 Wright to Childs, 2 December 1947, FRUS, Emergence of the Intelligence Establishment, 1945– 1950, document 251. 87 Darling, The Central Intelligence Agency, p. 259. 88 Hillenkoetter to Souers, 15 December 1947, FRUS, Emergence of the Intelligence Establishment, 1945– 1950, document 254. 89 Souers to NSC, 9 December 1947, FRUS, Emergence of the Intelligence Establishment, 1945– 1950, document 253. 90 Darling, The Central Intelligence Agency, p. 250. 91 Darling, The Central Intelligence Agency, p. 260; Souers to NSC, 16 December 1947, FRUS, Emergence of the Intelligence Establishment, 1945–1950, document 255. 92 Darling, The Central Intelligence Agency, pp. 260– 1. 93 State Department Briefing Memorandum, 17 December 1947, FRUS, Emergence of the Intelligence Establishment, 1945– 1950, document 256. 94 NSC 4-A, ‘Psychological Operations’, 17 December 1947, FRUS, Emergence of the Intelligence Establishment, 1945– 1950, document 257. 95 Souers to Hillenkoetter, 17 December 1947, FRUS, Emergence of the Intelligence Establishment, 1945– 1950, document 257. 96 Darling, The Central Intelligence Agency, p. 261. 97 Lyle Miller, ‘Legislative History of the Central Intelligence Agency – National Security Act of 1947’, Central Intelligence Agency (Washington, July 1967), pp. 12–13; Donovan to Roosevelt, ‘Memorandum for the President’, 18 November 1944 in Thomas F. Troy, Donovan and the CIA: A History of the Establishment of the Central Intelligence Agency (Frederick, 1981), pp. 445–7.

304

NOTES TO PAGES 44 –50

98 Hillenkoetter to Galloway, 22 December 1947, FRUS, Emergence of the Intelligence Establishment, 1945– 1950, document 258. 99 CIA 3 ‘Review of the World Situation as it Relates to the Security of the United States’, 17 December 1947, Truman Papers, PSF, Box 176, HSTL. 100 Sarah-Jane Corke, ‘George Kennan and the Inauguration of Political Warfare’, Journal of Conflict Studies, Vol. 26, No. 1 (Summer 2006), p. 104.

Chapter 2 Cold wars in Europe and the USA 1 CIA 3 ‘Review of the World Situation as it Relates to the Security of the United States’, 17 December 1947, Truman Papers, PSF, Box 176, Harry S. Truman Library, Independence Missouri (HSTL). 2 Richard J. Aldrich, The Hidden Hand: Britain, America and Cold War Secret Intelligence (London, 2002), p. 147; OSO Directive No. 18/5 (Interim), ‘Activation of Special Procedures Branch’, 24 February 1948, United States Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), Emergence of the Intelligence Establishment, 1945– 1950 (Washington, 1996), document 260. 3 Arthur B. Darling, The Central Intelligence Agency: An Instrument of Government to 1950 (London; University Park, 1990), pp. 262– 3. 4 Office of Special Operations Directive No. 18/5, ‘Activation of Special Procedures Group’, 29 March, 1948, FRUS, Emergence of the Intelligence Establishment, 1945– 1950, document 263. 5 Hillenkoetter to Galloway, ‘Additional Functions of Office of Special Operations’, 22 March, 1948 in Michael Warner (ed.), CIA Cold War Records: The CIA under Harry Truman (Washington, 1994), document 38. 6 Sarah-Jane Corke, US Covert Operations and Cold War Strategy: Truman, Secret Warfare and the CIA (London, 2008), pp. 24 – 5; Darling, The Central Intelligence Agency, pp. 262– 3. 7 Cassady to Dulin, 11 March, 1948, FRUS, Emergence of the Intelligence Establishment, 1945–1950, document 261; United States Senate, Foreign and Military Intelligence, Book I, Final Report of the Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities (Washington, 1976), pp. 493–4. 8 Hillenkoetter to Galloway, ‘Additional Functions of Office of Special Operations’, 22 March, 1948 in Warner, The CIA under Harry Truman, document 38. 9 Cassady to Dulin, 11 March, 1948, FRUS, Emergence of the Intelligence Establishment, 1945– 1950, document 261. 10 ‘List of Department of State and Foreign Service Personnel Having Knowledge of Political Warfare Operations’, (undated), RG 59, PPS, Box 11A, National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, Maryland (NARA). 11 PPS/13, ‘Resume˙ of World Situation’, 6 November, 1947 in Anna Kasten Nelson (ed.), The State Department Policy Planning Staff Papers, Volume I, 1947– 1949 (New York, 1983), pp. 129– 36.

NOTES TO PAGES 51 –53

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12 Kennan to Marshall, 15 March 1948, United States Department of State, FRUS, Western Europe, 1948, Volume III (Washington, 1974), pp. 848– 9. 13 Carolyn Woods Eisenberg, Drawing the Line: The American Decision to Divide Germany, 1944– 1949 (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 364, 398. 14 Kennan to Marshall, 15 March 1948, FRUS, 1948, Volume III, pp. 848– 9. 15 Hickerson to Marshall, 8 March 1948, FRUS, 1948, Volume III, pp. 40 – 2. 16 NSC 1/3 ‘Position of the United States with Respect to Italy in the Light of the Possibility of Communist Participation in the Government by Legal Means’, 8 March 1948, FRUS, 1948, Volume III, pp. 775– 9. 17 For example, Trevor Barnes, ‘The Secret Cold War: The C.I.A. and American Foreign Policy in Europe, 1946–1956’, The Historical Journal, Part I, Vol. 24, No. 2 (June 1981), p. 413; Mario Del Pero, ‘The United States and “Psychological Warfare” in Italy, 1948 –1955’, The Journal of American History, Vol. 87, No. 4 (March 2001), pp. 1306 –7; Roy Godson, Dirty Tricks or Trump Cards: US Covert Action and Counterintelligence (New Brunswick, 2001), p. 32; Walter L. Hixson, Parting the Curtain: Propaganda, Culture, and the Cold War, 1945– 1961 (Basingstoke, 1997), p. 13; James E. Miller, ‘Taking off the Gloves: The United States and the Italian Elections of 1948’, Diplomatic History, Vol. 7, No. 1 (Winter 1983), pp. 35 – 56; Wilson D. Miscamble, George F. Kennan and the Making of American Foreign Policy, 1947 –1950 (Oxford and Princeton, 1992), p. 106; Gregory Mitrovich, Undermining the Kremlin: America’s Strategy to Subvert the Soviet Bloc, 1947 –1956 (London and Ithaca, 2000), p. 18; Sallie Pisani, The CIA and the Marshall Plan (Lawrence, 1991), p. 67; Thomas Powers, The Man who Kept the Secrets: Richard Helms and the CIA (New York, 1979), p. 31; John Ranelagh, the Agency: The Rise and Decline of the CIA (Sevenoaks, 1988), p. 133. 18 Ray S. Cline, Secrets, Spies and Scholars: Blueprint of the Essential CIA (Washington, 1977), p. 102. 19 Corke, US Covert Operations, pp. 49 – 50. 20 Robin W. Winks, Cloak and Gown: Scholars in the Secret War, 1939– 1961 (New Haven and London, 1987), p. 384. 21 Barnes, ‘The Secret Cold War’, Part I, pp. 412– 13; Hixson, Parting the Curtain, p. 12; Rhodri Jeffreys – Jones, The CIA and American Democracy (London and New Haven, 1989), p. 52; Miller, ‘Taking Off the Gloves’; James Miller, The United States and Italy, 1940– 1950 (London and Chapel Hill, 1986), pp. 39 –55; Mitrovich, Undermining the Kremlin, pp. 17 – 18; Powers, The Man who Kept the Secrets, p. 30; Amy B. Zegart, Flawed by Design: The Evolution of the CIA, JCS and NSC (Stanford, 1999), p. 189. 22 Burton Hersh, The Old Boys: The American Elite and the Origins of the CIA (New York, 1992), pp. 208– 9; Powers, The Man who Kept the Secrets, pp. 30 – 1; Evan Thomas, The Very Best Men: Four Who Dared: the Early Years of the CIA (New York, 1995), pp. 28 – 9; Christopher Simpson, Blowback: America’s Recruitment of Nazis and its Effects on the Cold War (New York, 1988), pp. 89 – 95.

306

NOTES TO PAGES 54 –58

23 David M. Barrett, The CIA and Congress: The Untold Story from Truman to Kennedy (Lawrence, 2005), p. 30; L. Britt Snider, The Agency and the Hill: CIA’s Relationship with Congress, 1946– 2004 (Washington, 2008), p. 161. 24 Sarah-Jane Corke, ‘George Kennan and the Inauguration of Political Warfare’, Journal of Conflict Studies, Vol. 26, No. 1 (Summer 2006), pp. 98– 117; Peter Grose, Operation Rollback: America’s Secret War Behind the iron curtain (Boston, 2000); Anna Karalekas, ‘History of the Central Intelligence Agency’; William Leary (ed.), The Central Intelligence Agency: History and Documents (University, 1984); W. Scott Lucas and Kaeten Mistry, ‘Illusions of Coherence: George F. Kennan, U.S. Strategy and Political Warfare in the Early Cold War, 1946– 1950’ Diplomatic History, Vol. 33, No. 1 ( January 2009), pp. 39– 66; David Mayers, George F. Kennan and the Dilemmas of US Foreign Policy (Oxford, 1988); Miscamble, George F. Kennan and the Making of American Foreign Policy; Mitrovich, Undermining the Kremlin; David F. Rudgers, ‘The Origins of Covert Action’, Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 35, No. 2 (2000), pp. 249– 62. 25 Royall memorandum, ‘Army Organization for Psychological Warfare and Special Operations’, (undated), United States Declassified Document Reference System (DDRS) (Woodbridge, 1994); ‘Memorandum for the President of Discussion at the 11th Meeting of the National Security Council’, 20 May 1948; ‘Memorandum for the President of Discussion at the 12th Meeting of the National Security Council’, 3 June 1948; ‘Memorandum for the President of Discussion at the 13th Meeting of the National Security Council’, 17 June 1948, FRUS, Emergence of the Intelligence Establishment, 1945–1950, documents 277, 283 and 291. 26 Royall memorandum, ‘Army Organization for Psychological Warfare and Special Operations’, (undated), DDRS, SANACC 304/15; ‘Review of SANACC Studies Pertaining to Psychological Warfare’, undated, RG 59, PPS, Box 11A, NARA. 27 Allen to Lovett, 31 March 1948, Stone to Lovett, 1 April 1948, FRUS, Emergence of the Intelligence Establishment, 1945– 1950, documents 264 and 265. 28 ‘Memorandum for the President of Discussion at the 9th Meeting of the National Security Council’, 2 April 1948, FRUS, Emergence of the Intelligence Establishment, 1945– 1950, document 266. 29 PPS memorandum ‘The inauguration of organized political warfare’, 4 May 1948, FRUS, Emergence of the Intelligence Establishment, 1945– 1950, document 269. Also see an earlier version of this memorandum with the same title drafted on 30 April 1948, RG 59, PPS, Box 11A, NARA. 30 PPS/23 ‘Review of Current Trends United States Foreign Policy’, 24 February 1948 in Anna Kasten Nelson (ed.), The State Department Policy Planning Staff Papers, Volume II, 1948 (New York, 1983), pp. 103– 34. 31 NSC 7 ‘Position of the United States with Respect to Soviet–Directed World Communism’, 30 March 1948, FRUS: General; The United Nations, 1948, I, Part 2 (Washington, 1976), pp. 545–50 (an earlier draft of NSC 7 dated 19 March 1948 is available in RG 59, PPS, Box 32, NARA); PPS meeting, 6 April 1948, RG 59, PPS, Box 32, NARA; Thorp to Marshall, 7 April 1948, FRUS, 1948, I, Part 2, pp. 557–60; Butler to Lovett, 9 April 1948, RG 59, PPS, Box 33, NARA.

NOTES TO PAGES 58 – 64

307

32 George Kennan, ‘Measures Short of War (Diplomatic)’, 16 September 1946, in Giles D. Harlow and George C. Maerz (eds.), Measures Short of War: The George F. Kennan Lectures at the National War College 1946–47 (Washington, 1991), pp. 3–20. 33 George Kennan, ‘The Soviet Way of Thought and Its Effect on Foreign Policy’, 24 January 1947, in Giles D. Harlow and George C. Maerz (eds.), Measures Short of War, pp. 111– 30. 34 George Kennan, ‘The Sources of Soviet Conduct’, Foreign Affairs (July 1947), pp. 566– 82. 35 George Kennan, Memoirs, 1925–1950, (Boston, 1967), pp. 357–9; John Lukacs, George Kennan: A Study of Character (New Haven, 2007), p. 89. 36 George Kennan, ‘Problems of US Foreign Policy After Moscow’, 6 May 1947, in Harlow and Maerz, Measures Short of War, pp. 177– 206. 37 George Kennan, ‘What is Policy?’ 18 December 1947, in Harlow and Maerz, Measures Short of War, pp. 295– 318. 38 Aldrich, The Hidden Hand, p. 173. In particular Kennan’s Foreign Affairs article had focused on ends rather than means, so for Kennan, political warfare should become a core component of America’s Cold War methodology to activate strains and stresses in the Soviet bloc. 39 Kennan to Marshall, 6 January 1948, RG 59, PPS, Box 27, NARA; CIA 4 ‘Review of the World Situation as it Relates to the Security of the United States’, 12 January 1948, Truman Papers, PSF, Box 176, HSTL. 40 For instance, see PPS/23 ‘Review of Current Trends United States Foreign Policy’, 24 February 1948, in Nelson, PPS Papers, 1948, pp. 114 and 133. 41 PPS/22 ‘Utilization of Refugees from the Soviet Union in U.S. National Interest’, 19 February 1948, in Nelson, PPS Papers, 1948, pp. 88 – 95. 42 Butler to Wisner, 9 March 1948, and Butler to Lovett, 11 March 1948, RG 59, PPS, Box 33, NARA. 43 Jeffrey Burds, The Early Cold War in Soviet West Ukraine, 1944– 1948 (Pittsburgh, 2001), pp. 15 –16. 44 PPS 22/1 ‘Utilization of Refugees from the Soviet Union in U.S. National Interest’, 11 March 1948, in Nelson, PPS Papers, 1948, pp. 96 – 102. 45 Simpson, Blowback, pp. 99–102, 107–12; Thomas, The Very Best Men, pp. 24–6. 46 FRUS: The Intelligence Community 1950–1955 (Washington, 2007), document 15. 47 Thomas, The Very Best Men, p. 60. 48 Pell memorandum of conversation, 4 May 1950, FRUS: Central and Eastern Europe; the Soviet Union, 1950, Volume IV (Washington, 1981), pp. 19 – 20. 49 Harry Rositzke, The CIA’s Secret Operations: Espionage, Counterespionage, and Covert Action (Boulder, 1988), p. 158. 50 Thompson to Butler, 7 April 1948, RG 59, PPS, Box 11A, NARA. 51 PPS meeting, 8 April 1948, RG 59, PPS, Box 32, NARA. 52 Nicholas Bethell, The Great Betrayal: The Untold Story of Kim Philby’s Biggest Coup (London, 1948), p. 39. 53 W. Scott Lucas, Freedom’s War: The US Crusade against the Soviet Union 1945– 1956 (Manchester, 1999), p. 60.

308

NOTES TO PAGES 64 –74

54 Souers to NSC, ‘Coordination of Foreign Information Measures’, 26 April 1948, FRUS, Emergence of the Intelligence Establishment, 1945– 1950, document 267. 55 Darling, The Central Intelligence Agency, p. 265. 56 NSC meeting, 13 January 1948, Truman Papers, PSF, Box 176, HSTL. 57 Darling, The Central Intelligence Agency, pp. 263, 269. 58 Darling, The Central Intelligence Agency, pp. 262– 3; Corke, ‘George Kennan and the Inauguration of Political Warfare’, pp. 107– 8. 59 Cassady memorandum ‘Policy Liaison for SPG Activities’, (undated – approximate date 1 May 1948), FRUS, Emergence of the Intelligence Establishment, 1945–1950, document 268. 60 Darling, The Central Intelligence Agency, p. 276. 61 Grose, Operation Rollback, pp. 96 – 104. 62 PPS meeting, 3 May 1948, RG 59, PPS, Box 32, NARA. Also see Miscamble, George F. Kennan and the Making of American Foreign Policy, p. 108; Mitrovich, Undermining the Kremlin, p. 18. 63 Corke, US Covert Operations, p. 53. 64 PPS memorandum ‘The inauguration of organized political warfare’, 30 April 1948, RG 59, PPS, Box 11A, NARA. 65 PPS memorandum ‘The inauguration of organized political warfare’, 4 May 1948, FRUS, Emergence of the Intelligence Establishment, 1945–1950, document 269. 66 PPS memorandum ‘The inauguration of organized political warfare’, 30 April 1948, RG 59, PPS, Box 11A, NARA. 67 Darling, The Central Intelligence Agency, p. 266; Corke, ‘George Kennan and the Inauguration of Political Warfare’, p. 109. 68 Karalekas, History of the Central Intelligence Agency, p. 109; Mitrovich, Undermining the Kremlin, p. 8. 69 ‘Draft Proposed NSC Directive’, 5 May 1948, FRUS, Emergence of the Intelligence Establishment, 1945– 1950, document 270. 70 For instance see Cline, Secrets, Spies and Scholars, p. 97. For a contrasting view see Hersh, The Old Boys, p. 254. 71 Hillenkoetter to Souers, 5 May 1948, FRUS, Emergence of the Intelligence Establishment, 1945– 1950, document 271, Darling, The Central Intelligence Agency, pp. 266– 7. 72 Hillenkoetter to Souers, 6 May 1948, FRUS, Emergence of the Intelligence Establishment, 1945– 1950, document 272, Darling, The Central Intelligence Agency, pp. 267– 8. 73 Darling, The Central Intelligence Agency, p. 268. 74 Kennan to Marshall and Lovett, 11 May 1948, RG 59, PPS, Box 33, NARA. 75 Darling, The Central Intelligence Agency, p. 268. 76 Hillenkoetter to Souers ‘Psychological Operations’, 11 May 1948; Warner, The CIA under Harry Truman, document 40. 77 ‘Memorandum for the President of Discussion at the 11th Meeting of the National Security Council’, 20 May 1948, FRUS, Emergence of the Intelligence Establishment, 1945– 1950, document 277.

NOTES TO PAGES 74 –82

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78 NSC 10 ‘Director of Special Studies’, 12 May 1948, FRUS, Emergence of the Intelligence Establishment, 1945– 1950, document 274. 79 ISG to Souers, ‘Interim Report No. 2: Relations between Secret Operations and Secret Intelligence’, 13 May 1948, FRUS, Emergence of the Intelligence Establishment, 1945– 1950, document 275. 80 Darling, The Central Intelligence Agency, p. 269. 81 See Corke, ‘George Kennan and the Inauguration of Political Warfare’, p. 110. 82 Grose, Operation Rollback, pp. 106– 7; Powers, The Man who Kept the Secrets, p. 32. 83 ISG ‘Interim Report No. 2: Relations between Secret Operations and Secret Intelligence’, 13 May 1948, FRUS, Emergence of the Intelligence Establishment, 1945– 1950, document 275. 84 ISG ‘Interim Report No. 2: Relations between Secret Operations and Secret Intelligence,’’, 13 May, 1948, FRUS, Emergence of the Intelligence Establishment, 1945– 1950, document 275. 85 Kennan to Lovett and Marshall, 19 May 1948, FRUS, Emergence of the Intelligence Establishment, 1945– 1950, document 276. 86 Kennan to Lovett and Marshall, 19 May 1948, FRUS, Emergence of the Intelligence Establishment, 1945– 1950, document 276. 87 ‘Memorandum for the President of Discussion at the 11th Meeting of the National Security Council’, 20 May 1948, FRUS, Emergence of the Intelligence Establishment, 1945– 1950, document 277. 88 Butler to Lovett, 24 May 1948, RG 59, PPS, Box 33, NARA. 89 Kennan to Lovett, 25 May 1948, FRUS, Emergence of the Intelligence Establishment, 1945– 1950, document 279. 90 Kennan to Lovett, 25 May 1948, FRUS, Emergence of the Intelligence Establishment, 1945– 1950, document 279. 91 Hillenkoetter to NSC ‘Covert (Psychological) Operations’, 24 May 1948, FRUS, Emergence of the Intelligence Establishment, 1945– 1950, document 278. Also see David M. Barrett, The CIA and Congress: The Untold Story from Truman to Kennedy (Lawrence, 2005), p. 29; Darling, The Central Intelligence Agency, pp. 269– 70; Lilly, ‘The Development of American Psychological Operations 1945– 1951’, DDRS, p. 45; Mitrovich, Undermining the Kremlin, pp. 18 –19. 92 ‘Memorandum of a Meeting held in Mr. Forrestal’s Office on Friday, 28 May, 1948 to consider NSC 10 “Director of Special Studies”’, 28 May 1948, FRUS, Emergence of the Intelligence Establishment, 1945–1950, document 280; Darling, The Central Intelligence Agency, p. 270. 93 ‘Memorandum of a Meeting held in Mr. Forrestal’s Office on Friday, 28 May, 1948 to consider NSC 10 “Director of Special Studies”’, 28 May 1948, FRUS, Emergence of the Intelligence Establishment, 1945– 1950, document 280. 94 Souers to NSC, ‘Establishment of a Special Services Unit in the Central Intelligence Agency’, 2 June 1948, FRUS, Emergence of the Intelligence Establishment, 1945– 1950, document 281.

310

NOTES TO PAGES 82 –93

95 Souers to NSC, ‘Establishment of a Special Services Unit in the Central Intelligence Agency’, 2 June 1948, FRUS, Emergence of the Intelligence Establishment, 1945– 1950, document 281. 96 Souers to NSC, ‘Establishment of a Special Services Unit in the Central Intelligence Agency’, 2 June 1948, FRUS, Emergence of the Intelligence Establishment, 1945– 1950, document 281. 97 Butler to Lovett and Marshall, 2 June 1948, FRUS, Emergence of the Intelligence Establishment, 1945– 1950, document 282. 98 ‘Memorandum for the President of Discussion at the 12th Meeting of the National Security Council’, 3 June 1948, FRUS, Emergence of the Intelligence Establishment, 1945– 1950, document 283; NSC meeting, 3 June 1948, Truman Papers, PSF, Box 176, HSTL. 99 NSC memorandum, ‘Principles Tentatively Approved by the National Security Council’, 4 June 1948, FRUS, Emergence of the Intelligence Establishment, 1945– 1950, document 284. 100 Lay to Hillenkoetter, ‘Proposed NSC Directive’, 7 June 1948, FRUS, Emergence of the Intelligence Establishment, 1945– 1950, document 285; Darling, The Central Intelligence Agency, p. 271. 101 Kennan to Lovett, 8 June 1948, FRUS, Emergence of the Intelligence Establishment, 1945– 1950, document 286. 102 Darling, The Central Intelligence Agency, pp. 271– 2. 103 Hillenkoetter to Lay, 9 June 1948; Warner, The CIA under Harry Truman, document 41. 104 Darling, The Central Intelligence Agency, p. 276. 105 Barnes, ‘The Secret Cold War’, Part I, p. 414; Corke, ‘George Kennan and the Inauguration of Political Warfare’, p. 113. 106 Souers to NSC, NSC 10/1 ‘Office of Special Projects’, 15 June 1948, FRUS, Emergence of the Intelligence Establishment, 1945– 1950, document 288. 107 Kennan to Lovett and Marshall, 16 June 1948, FRUS, Emergence of the Intelligence Establishment, 1945– 1950, document 288. 108 ‘Memorandum for the President of Discussion at the 13th Meeting of the National Security Council’, 17 June 1948, FRUS, Emergence of the Intelligence Establishment, 1945– 1950, document 291; Darling, The Central Intelligence Agency, pp. 274– 5; Lilly, ‘The Development of American Psychological Operations 1945– 1951’, DDRS, pp. 46 – 7. 109 Richard Helms with William Hood, A Look Over my Shoulder: a Life in the Central Intelligence Agency (New York, 2003), p. 113. 110 Aldrich, The Hidden Hand, pp. 147– 8 111 NSC 10/2, ‘Office of Special Projects’, 18 June 1948, FRUS, Emergence of the Intelligence Establishment, 1945– 1950, document 292; Darling, The Central Intelligence Agency, pp. 274– 6. 112 NSC 10/2, ‘Office of Special Projects’, 18 June 1948, FRUS, Emergence of the Intelligence Establishment, 1945– 1950, document 292.

NOTES TO PAGES 93 –101

311

113 Footnote to NSC 10/2, FRUS, Emergence of the Intelligence Establishment, 1945– 1950, document 292. 114 NSC 10/2, ‘Office of Special Projects’, 18 June 1948, FRUS, Emergence of the Intelligence Establishment, 1945– 1950, document 292. 115 Memorandum for the Secretary of the Army, ‘Army Organization for Psychological Warfare and Special Operations’, (undated), DDRS. 116 Helms, A Look Over my Shoulder, p. 114.

Chapter 3 The Strategic Dilemma 1 Dean Acheson, Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department (London, 1970), p. 257. 2 Acheson, Present at the Creation, p. 259. 3 Sarah-Jane Corke, US Covert Operations and Cold War Strategy: Truman, Secret Warfare and the CIA (London, 2008), p. 60. 4 NSC 10/2, ‘Office of Special Projects’, 18 June 1948, in Michael Warner (ed.), CIA Cold War Records: The CIA under Harry Truman (Washington, 1994), document 43. 5 NSC 7 ‘Position of the United States with Respect to Soviet-Directed World Communism’, 30 March 1948, United States Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), General; The United Nations, 1948, Volume I, Part 2, (Washington, 1976), pp. 545– 50. 6 PPS meeting, 6 April 1948, RG 59, PPS, Box 32, National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, Maryland (NARA); Thorp to Marshall, 7 April 1948, FRUS, 1948, I Part 2, pp. 557–60; Butler to Lovett, 9 April 1948, RG 59, PPS, Box 33, NARA. 7 Forrestal to Marshall, 31 October 1948, FRUS, 1948, Volume I, Part 2, pp. 644– 6. 8 Forrestal to Truman, 10 July 1948, FRUS, 1948, Volume I, Part 2, pp. 592– 3. 9 NSC 20 ‘Appraisal of the Degree and Character of Military Preparedness Required by the World Situation’, 10 July 1948, FRUS, 1948, Volume I, Part 2, pp. 589– 92. 10 Acheson, Present at the Creation, pp. 214– 15. Also see Paul H. Nitze Oral History, Harry S. Truman Library, Independence Missouri (HSTL), pp. 151– 2. 11 John Lamberton Harper, American Visions of Europe: Franklin D. Roosevelt, George F. Kennan and Dean G. Acheson (Cambridge, 1994), p. 208. 12 Kennan to Marshall and Lovett, 5 August 1948, FRUS, 1948, Volume I, Part 2, pp. 599– 60. 13 PPS/33 ‘Factors Affecting the Nature of US Defense Arrangements in the Light of Soviet Policies’, 23 June 1948, in Anna Kasten Nelson (ed.), The State Department Policy Planning Staff Papers, Volume II, 1948 (New York, 1983), pp. 281–92. PPS/33 was circulated by the Council as NSC 20/2 on 25 August. See FRUS, 1948, Volume I, Part 2, p. 592 (footnotes) and pp. 615–24.

312

NOTES TO PAGES 101 –109

14 Forrestal to Marshall, 31 October 1948, FRUS, 1948, Volume I, Part 2, pp. 644– 6. On the defence budget issue see Forrestal to Truman, 1 December 1948, FRUS, 1948, Volume I, Part 2, pp. 669– 72. 15 Townsend Hoopes and Douglas Brinkley, Driven Patriot: the Life and Times of James Forrestal (New York, 1992), pp. 406–7. 16 NSC meeting, 5 August 1948, Truman Papers, PSF Box 177, HSTL. 17 PPS/38 was circulated as NSC 20/1 on 18 August, available at Truman Papers, PSF, Box 177, HSTL. 18 George Kennan, ‘The Sources of Soviet Conduct’, Foreign Affairs (1947). 19 George Kennan, ‘Containment 40 Years Later: Containment Then and Now’, Foreign Affairs, (Spring 1987). 20 PPS/38 ‘United States Objectives with Respect to Russia’, 18 August 1948, Nelson, PPS Papers, 1948, pp. 372–411. 21 Bohlen to Carter, 7 November 1948; Marshall to Lovett, 8 November 1948; FRUS, 1948, Volume I, Part 2, pp. 652– 4 and 655. 22 Butler to Kennan, 11 October 1948, RG 59, PPS, Box 33, NARA. 23 Corke, US Covert Operations, p. 74. 24 Joint Orientation Conference meeting, 8 November 1948, RG 59, PPS, Box 48, NARA. 25 Joint Orientation Conference meeting, 8 November 1948, RG 59, PPS, Box 48, NARA. 26 Wilson D. Miscamble, George F. Kennan and the Making of American Foreign Policy, 1947– 1950 (Oxford and Princeton, 1992), p. 199. 27 NSC 20/4 ‘U.S. Objectives with Respect to the USSR to Counter Soviet Threats to U.S. Security’, 23 November 1948, FRUS, 1948, Volume I, Part 2, pp. 662–9. 28 George Kennan, ‘Problems of US Foreign Policy After Moscow’, 6 May 1947, in Giles D. Harlow and George C. Maerz (eds.), Measures Short of War: The George F. Kennan Lectures at the National War College 1946– 47 (Washington, 1991), pp. 177– 206. 29 PPS/37 ‘Policy Questions Concerning a Possible German Settlement’, 12 August 1948, Nelson, PPS Papers, 1948, p. 325. 30 PPS/37 ‘Policy Questions Concerning a Possible German Settlement’, 12 August 1948, Nelson, PPS Papers, 1948, p. 325. 31 Carolyn Woods Eisenberg, Drawing the Line: The American Decision to Divide Germany, 1944– 1949 (Cambridge, 1996), p. 492. 32 Anders Stephanson, Kennan and the Art of Foreign Policy (London and Cambridge, Mass., 1989), p. 113. 33 Robert A. Garson, ‘American Foreign Policy and the Limits of Power: Eastern Europe, 1946– 50’, Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 21, No. 3 (July 1986), p. 351. 34 Stephanson, Kennan and the Art of Foreign Policy, pp. 114– 15 and 144. 35 Eisenberg, Drawing the Line, p. 423. On Soviet implementation of the blockade see William Stivers, ‘The Incomplete Blockade: Soviet Zone Supply of West Berlin, 1948– 49’, Diplomatic History, Vol. 21, No. 4 (Fall 1997), pp. 569– 602.

NOTES TO PAGES 109 –115

313

36 George F. Kennan, Memoirs, 1925– 1950, (Boston, 1967), p. 422. 37 Joshua Botts, ‘“Nothing to Seek and . . . Nothing to Defend”: George F. Kennan’s Core Values and American Foreign Policy, 1938– 1993’, Diplomatic History, Vol. 30, No. 5 (November 2006), pp. 842, 859. 38 PPS/37 ‘Policy Questions Concerning a Possible German Settlement’, 12 August 1948, in Nelson, PPS Papers, 1948, pp. 322– 34. 39 PPS 37/1 ‘Position to be taken by the United States at a CFM Meeting’, 15 November 1948, in Nelson, PPS Papers, 1948, pp. 335– 71. 40 Harper, American Visions of Europe, pp. 217– 19. 41 Kennan, Memoirs, p. 446. 42 Eisenberg, Drawing the Line, p. 470. 43 See Paul H. Nitze Oral History, HSTL, pp. 206– 9. 44 Harper, American Visions of Europe, p. 210. 45 For more on Program A see Eisenberg, ‘Rethinking the Division of Germany’, Allen Hunter (ed.), Rethinking the Cold War (Philadelphia, 1998), pp. 50 – 8; John Lewis Gaddis, We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History (Oxford, 1997), pp. 118– 23; Harper, American Visions of Europe, pp. 205– 25; Kennan, Memoirs, 1925– 1950, pp. 419– 49; David Mayers, George F. Kennan and the Dilemmas of US Foreign Policy (Oxford and New York, 1988), pp. 145– 8; Anders Stephanson, Kennan and the Art of Foreign Policy, pp. 114–51. 46 Botts, ‘“Nothing to Seek and . . . Nothing to Defend”’, p. 859. 47 Robert M. Blum, ‘Surprised by Tito: The Anatomy of an Intelligence Failure’, Diplomatic History, Vol. 12, No. 1 (Winter 1988), pp. 39 – 57. 48 Beatrice Heuser, ‘Covert Action within British and American Concepts of Containment, 1948– 1951’, Richard J. Aldrich (ed.), British Intelligence, Strategy and the Cold War, 1945– 1951 (London, 1992), p. 72. 49 Reams to Marshall, 18 June 1948; Reams to Marshall, 29 June 1948; US Military Attache´s in Yugoslavia to Marshall, 29 June 1948; Reams to Marshall, 30 June 1948; Smith to Marshall, 1 July 1948; Draper to Royall, 6 July 1948; in FRUS: Eastern Europe; The Soviet Union, 1948, Volume IV, (Washington, 1974), pp. 1073–5, 1076, 1076–7, 1077–8, 1082–3, 1085–7; Cassady to Hillenkoetter, 30 June 1948, in FRUS, Emergence of the Intelligence Establishment, 1945–1950 (Washington, 1996), document 295. 50 Hillenkoetter to Truman, 29 June 1948; Hillenkoetter to Truman, 30 June 1948, RG 218, US JCS, Leahy Files, Box 19, NARA. 51 PPS/35 ‘The Attitude of this Government toward Events in Yugoslavia’, 30 June 1948, Nelson, PPS Papers, 1948, pp. 317– 21. 52 NSC 18 ‘The Attitude of this Government Toward Events in Yugoslavia’, 6 July 1948, Truman Papers, PSF, Box 177, HSTL. 53 FRUS, 1948, Volume IV, pp. 1079– 81. 54 PPS/38 ‘United States Objectives with Respect to Russia’, 18 August 1948, Nelson, PPS Papers, 1948, pp. 372–411. 55 Draper to Royall, 6 July 1948; Wisner to Harriman, 22 July 1948; Douglas to Marshall, 27 July 1948, in FRUS, 1948, Volume IV, pp. 1085–7, 1095–6, 1098–9.

314 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74

75 76 77 78

NOTES TO PAGES 116 –124

Reams to Marshall, 31 August 1948, in FRUS, 1948, Volume IV, pp. 1102– 5. John C. Campbell Oral History, HSTL, pp. 124– 5, 131. Reams to Marshall, 15 September 1948, FRUS, 1948, Volume IV, pp. 1106–10. John C. Campbell Oral History, HSTL, pp. 131– 2. John C. Campbell Oral History, HSTL, pp. 133– 4. Paper prepared for the Under Secretary of State’s Meeting, 14 February 1949, FRUS: Eastern Europe; The Soviet Union, 1949, Volume V, (Washington, 1976), pp. 866– 8. NSC 18/2 ‘Economic Relations between the United States and Yugoslavia’, 17 February 1949, Truman Papers, PSF, Box 177, HSTL. CIA ORE 16 –49 ‘The Yugoslav Dilemma’, 10 February 1949, Truman Papers, PSF, Box 215, HSTL. Adams and Davies to Kennan ‘United States Policy toward Communism’, 8 March 1949, RG 59, PPS, Box 8, NARA. Adams and Davies to Kennan ‘United States Policy toward Communism’, 8 March 1949, RG 59, PPS, Box 8, NARA. PPS meeting, 1 March 1949, FRUS, 1949, Volume V, p. 9. Kennan to Acheson and Webb, 4 April 1949, RG 59, PPS, Box 33, NARA; Kennan to Acheson and Webb, 14 April 1949, FRUS, National Security Affairs, Foreign Economic Policy, 1949, Volume I (Washington, 1976), p. 282. Under Secretary of State’s Meeting, 15 April 1949, FRUS, 1949, Volume I, pp. 283– 4. Draft NSC staff report ‘Measures Required to Achieve U.S. Objectives with Respect to the USSR’, 30 March 1949, FRUS, 1949, Volume I, pp. 271– 7. PPS meeting, 1 March 1949, FRUS, 1949, Volume V, pp. 9 –10. PPS meeting, 1 March 1949, FRUS, 1949, Volume V, p. 10; PPS meeting, 14 March 1949, RG 59, PPS, Box 32, NARA. Joyce to Savage, 1 April 1949, FRUS, 1949, Volume V, pp. 10 – 13. Under Secretary of State’s Meeting, 2 May 1949; Webb memorandum of conversation, 4 May 1949; Webb to Souers, 24 May 1949; Kennan to Rusk, 7 September 1949, in FRUS, 1949, Volume I, pp. 291–2, 296–8, 313–4, 381–4. Ernest May (ed.), American Cold War Strategy: Interpreting NSC 68 (Boston, 1993), pp. 7 – 8; Paul H. Nitze, From Hiroshima to Glasnost: At the Center of Decision: A Memoir (London, 1990), p. 86; H. Freeman Matthews Oral History, HSTL, 29 – 31; Paul H. Nitze Oral History, HSTL, pp. 210– 14. John C. Campbell Oral History, HSTL, pp. 156– 7. Miscamble, George F. Kennan and the Making of American Foreign Policy, p. 205; Gregory Mitrovich, Undermining the Kremlin: America’s Strategy to Subvert the Soviet Bloc, 1947– 1956 (London and Ithaca, 2000), pp. 39 – 40. Footnote to PPS/59 ‘U.S. Policy toward the Soviet Satellite States in Eastern Europe’, 25 August 1949, FRUS, 1949, Volume V, p. 21. Adams and Davies to Kennan ‘United States Policy toward Communism’, 8 March 1949, RG 59, PPS, Box 8, NARA.

NOTES TO PAGES 124 –136

315

79 PPS/59 ‘U.S. Policy toward the Soviet Satellite States in Eastern Europe’, 25 August 1949, in Anna Kasten Nelson (ed.), The State Department Policy Planning Staff Papers, Volume III, 1949 (New York; London, 1983), pp. 124– 38. 80 John C. Campbell Oral History, HSTL, p. 157. 81 PPS/59 ‘U.S. Policy toward the Soviet Satellite States in Eastern Europe’, 25 August 1949, in Nelson, PPS Papers, 1949, pp. 124– 38. 82 CIA ORE 16 –49 ‘The Yugoslav Dilemma’, 10 February 1949, Truman Papers, PSF, Box 215, HSTL. 83 PPS/59 ‘U.S. Policy toward the Soviet Satellite States in Eastern Europe’, 25 August 1949, in Nelson, PPS Papers, 1949, pp. 124– 38. 84 John C. Campbell Oral History, HSTL, pp. 157– 61. 85 Editorial note, FRUS, 1949, Volume V, pp. 27 – 8. 86 Conclusions and Recommendations of the London Conference of United States Chiefs of Mission to the Satellite States, 24 – 6 October 1949; Perkins to Acheson, 7 November 1949, FRUS, 1949, Volume V, pp. 28 – 35, 36 – 8. 87 State Department Policy Statement ‘Yugoslavia’, 1 September 1949, FRUS, 1949, Volume V, pp. 941– 4; PPS/60 ‘Yugoslav – Moscow Controversy as related to U.S. Foreign Policy Objectives’, 10 September 1949, in Nelson, PPS Papers, pp. 139– 49; Office of Public Affairs Information Memorandum No. 64, ‘The USSR – Yugoslav Split’, 26 October 1949, Clifford Papers, Box 16, HSTL. 88 Mitrovich, Undermining the Kremlin, p. 41. 89 Summary Record of the Meeting of Ambassadors at Paris, 21 – 22 October 1949; Perkins to Acheson, 22 October 1949; Perkins to Acheson, 7 November 1949, in FRUS, 1949, Volume V, pp. 972–3, 973– 4, 36 – 8. 90 JCS to Johnson, 16 November 1949, FRUS: Central and Eastern Europe; the Soviet Union, 1950, Volume IV (Washington, 1981), pp. 1339– 41. 91 PPS meeting, 30 November 1949, RG 59, PPS, Box 32, NARA. 92 Kennan draft memorandum, ‘Foreign Policy’ (handwritten title), 22 November 1949, RG 59, PPS, Box 9, NARA; Kennan’s Address to the Commercial Club of Cincinnati, Ohio, ‘Russia and the Russians’, 21 January 1950, RG 59, PPS, Box 48, NARA. 93 CIA Intelligence Memorandum No. 248 ‘Satellite Relations with the USSR and the West’, 7 November 1949, Truman Papers, NSC, Box 1, HSTL. 94 Davies memorandum ‘Political Warfare against the U.S.S.R.’, 19 October 1949, RG 59, PPS, Box 2, NARA. 95 Davies memorandum ‘Political Warfare against the U.S.S.R.’, 19 October 1949, RG 59, PPS, Box 2, NARA. 96 NSC 58/2 ‘United States Policy Toward the Soviet Satellite States in Eastern Europe’, 8 December 1949, Truman Papers, PSF, Box 179, HSTL. 97 PPS draft paper ‘The Position of the United States in World Affairs’, 9 December 1949, RG 59, PPS, Box 10, NARA. 98 Webb to Lay ‘First Progress Report on the Implementation of NSC 58/2’, 2 February 1950, Truman Papers, PSF, Box 179, HSTL. 99 PPS meeting, 11 January 1950, RG 59, PPS, Box 32, NARA.

316

NOTES TO PAGES 137 –151

100 Mitrovich, Undermining the Kremlin, pp. 40 – 1. 101 Davies memorandum, 1 January 1950, RG 59, PPS, Box 45, NARA. 102 Davies memorandum ‘Recommended Measures against U.S.S.R.’, 4 March 1950, RG 59, PPS, Box 45, NARA. 103 Davies memorandum ‘Recommended Measures against U.S.S.R.’, 4 March 1950, RG 59, PPS, Box 45, NARA. 104 Webb to Lay ‘First Progress Report on the Implementation of NSC 58/2’, 2 February 1950, Truman Papers, PSF, Box 179, HSTL. 105 Office of Eastern European Affairs, ‘Policy toward Soviet Satellites in Eastern Europe’, undated (circulated 11 April 1950), FRUS, 1950, Volume IV, pp. 14–7. 106 State Policy Paper, ‘Soviet Intentions and Capabilities’, 18 April 1950, FRUS, 1950, Volume IV, pp. 1150– 3. 107 Webb to Lay ‘Second Progress Report on the Implementation of NSC 18/4’, 16 May 1950, FRUS, 1950, Volume IV, pp. 1418–20. 108 Webb to Lay ‘Second Progress Report on the Implementation of NSC 58/2’, 26 May 1950, FRUS, 1950, Volume IV, pp. 31– 3. 109 Webb to Lay ‘Second Progress Report on the Implementation of NSC 58/2’, 26 May 1950, FRUS, 1950, Volume IV, pp. 31– 3.

Chapter 4

Systemic Disorder

1 Wisner to Hillenkoetter, ‘OPC Projects’, 29 October 1948, Kennan to Wisner, 6 January 1949, in United States Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), Emergence of the Intelligence Establishment, 1945– 1950 (Washington, 1996), documents 306 and 308. 2 See endnotes 11, 12 and 13 in Introduction for bibliographic examples. 3 See endnote 8 in Introduction for bibliographic examples. 4 Peter Grose, Operation Rollback: America’s Secret War Behind the iron curtain (Boston, 2000); Burton Hersh, The Old Boys: The American Elite and the Origins of the CIA (New York, 1992); Gregory Mitrovich, Undermining the Kremlin: America’s Strategy to Subvert the Soviet Bloc, 1947– 1956 (London and Ithaca, 2000). 5 NSC 4-A, ‘Psychological Operations’, 17 December 1947, FRUS, Emergence of the Intelligence Establishment, document 257. 6 ‘Memorandum of Conversation and Understanding’, 6 August 1948, FRUS, Emergence of the Intelligence Establishment, document 298. 7 ‘Memorandum of Conversation and Understanding’, 6 August 1948, FRUS, Emergence of the Intelligence Establishment, document 298. 8 Souers to NSC, ‘NSC 10/1’, 15 June 1948, FRUS, Emergence of the Intelligence Establishment, document 288. 9 Kennan to Lovett, 29 October 1948, FRUS, Emergence of the Intelligence Establishment, document 305.

NOTES TO PAGES 151 –155

317

10 Houston to Hillenkoetter, ‘Responsibility and Control for OPC’, 19 October 1948, in Michael Warner (ed.), CIA Cold War Records: The CIA under Harry Truman (Washington, 1994), document 46. 11 Kennan to Lovett and Marshall, 19 May 1948, FRUS, Emergence of the Intelligence Establishment, document 276. 12 Ludwell Lee Montague, General Walter Bedell Smith as Director of Central Intelligence: October 1950– February 1953 (University Park, Pennsylvania, 1992), pp. 47, 111. 13 ISG to NSC, ‘The Central Intelligence Organization and National Organization for Intelligence’, 1 January 1949, FRUS, Emergence of the Intelligence Establishment, document 358. 14 Montague, General Walter Bedell Smith, pp. 47 – 8, 78. 15 Montague, General Walter Bedell Smith, pp. 77 – 105 and 202– 15. 16 Kennan to Lovett, 29 October 1948, FRUS, Emergence of the Intelligence Establishment, document 305. 17 This responsibility would switch to the Pentagon in wartime. Its representative Colonel Ivan D. Yeaton (succeeded by Joseph McNarney and then John Magruder) would maintain a link to the OPC in peacetime and attend weekly meetings with Kennan and Wisner. NSC meeting, 19 August 1948, FRUS, Emergence of the Intelligence Establishment, document 299. 18 Despite the enormous amount of energy Kennan devoted to ensuring his primary role in overseeing the OPC’s political warfare activities, in an interview with John Lewis Gaddis in 1983, Kennan claimed that he ‘scarcely paid any attention’ to the OPC once it was established. But Kennan’s comment has to be understood in light of his later regret over setting up the entire political warfare programme. See John Lewis Gaddis, George F. Kennan: An American Life (New York and London, 2011), p. 318. 19 PPS/37 ‘Policy Questions Concerning a Possible German Settlement’, 12 August 1948, in Anna Kasten Nelson (ed.), The State Department Policy Planning Staff Papers, Volume II, 1948 (New York, 1983), p. 325. 20 On Program A and the development of alternative courses on Germany see Carolyn Woods Eisenberg, Drawing the Line: The American Decision to Divide Germany, 1944 – 1949 (Cambridge, 1996); Carolyn Woods Eisenberg, ‘Rethinking the Division of Germany’ in Allen Hunter (ed.), Rethinking the Cold War (Philadelphia, 1998), pp. 50–8; John Lewis Gaddis, We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History (Oxford, 1997), pp. 118–23; John Lamberton Harper, American Visions of Europe: Franklin D. Roosevelt, George F. Kennan and Dean G. Acheson (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 205–25; George F. Kennan, Memoirs, 1925– 1950 (Boston, 1967), pp. 419–49; Anders Stephanson, Kennan and the Art of Foreign Policy (London and Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1989), pp. 114–51. 21 Kennan to Souers, 2 December 1948, RG 59, PPS, Box 11, National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, Maryland (NARA). 22 Savage to Byrnes, 9 September 1948, RG 59, PPS, Box 33, NARA.

318

NOTES TO PAGES 156 –163

23 Kennan to Webb, 30 March 1950, FRUS, The Intelligence Community 1950– 1955 (Washington, 2007), document 4. 24 Evan Thomas, The Very Best Men: Four Who Dared: The Early Years of the CIA (New York, 1995), p. 40. 25 Hersh, The Old Boys, p. 225. 26 Wilson D. Miscamble, George F. Kennan and the Making of American Foreign Policy, 1947– 1950 (Oxford and Princeton, 1992), p. 208. 27 John C. Campbell Oral History, Harry S. Truman Library, Independence Missouri (HSTL), pp. 138– 9. 28 Thomas, The Very Best Men, p. 30. 29 Gaddis, George F. Kennan, p. 319. 30 Thomas, The Very Best Men, pp. 27 – 8. 31 On Wisner see William Colby, Honourable Men: My Life in the CIA (London, 1978), p. 73; Hersh, The Old Boys, pp. 177–200, 227–8; Anna Karalekas, History of the Central Intelligence Agency (Laguna Hills, 1977), pp. 46–8; Eduard Mark, ‘The OSS in Romania, 1944–45: An Intelligence Operation of the Early Cold War’, Intelligence and National Security, Vol. 9, No. 1 (January 1994), pp. 320–44. 32 Thomas, The Very Best Men, pp. 19 – 23; Hersh, The Old Boys, p. 159. 33 Kennan to Lovett, 30 June 1948, RG 59, PPS, Box 11A, NARA. 34 Sarah-Jane Corke, US Covert Operations and Cold War Strategy: Truman, Secret Warfare and the CIA (London, 2008), pp. 5 – 6. 35 Thomas, The Very Best Men, p. 30. 36 CIA General Order No. 10, 27 August 1948, FRUS, Emergence of the Intelligence Establishment, document 300. 37 Wisner to Hillenkoetter, ‘OPC Projects’, 29 October 1948, FRUS, Emergence of the Intelligence Establishment, document 306. 38 Kennan to Lovett, 31 August 1948, RG 59, PPS, Box 33, NARA. 39 Lovett to Forrestal, 1 October 1948, FRUS, Emergence of the Intelligence Establishment, document 301. 40 Forrestal to Lovett, 13 October 1948, FRUS, Emergence of the Intelligence Establishment, document 304. 41 Sallie Pisani, The CIA and the Marshall Plan (Lawrence, 1991), pp. 68, 81 –3. 42 Richard Harris Smith, quoted in Hersh, The Old Boys, p. 219. 43 Memorandum for the file, 16 November 1948, FRUS, Emergence of the Intelligence Establishment, document 307; Grose, Operation Rollback, p. 117. 44 Richard M. Bissell with Jonathan E. Lewis and Frances T. Pudlo, Reflections of a Cold Warrior: From Yalta to the Bay of Pigs (New Haven, 1996), p. 68. 45 Bissell, Reflections of a Cold Warrior, p. 68. 46 Bissell, Reflections of a Cold Warrior, pp. 68 – 9. 47 Wisner memorandum for the record, 2 November 1950, FRUS, The Intelligence Community 1950– 1955, document 31. 48 John C. Campbell Oral History, HSTL, pp. 196– 7. 49 PPS memorandum, ‘The inauguration of organized political warfare’, 4 May 1948, FRUS, Emergence of the Intelligence Establishment, document 269.

NOTES TO PAGES 164 –170

319

50 PPS/59 ‘U.S. Policy toward the Soviet Satellite States in Eastern Europe’, 25 August 1949, in Anna Kasten Nelson (ed.), The State Department Policy Planning Staff Papers, Volume III, 1949 (New York, 1983), pp. 124– 38. 51 Wisner to Hillenkoetter, 29 October 1948, FRUS, Emergence of the Intelligence Establishment, document 306. 52 Kennan to Wisner, 6 January 1949, FRUS, Emergence of the Intelligence Establishment, document 308. 53 Sarah-Jane Corke, ‘George Kennan and the Inauguration of Political Warfare’, Journal of Conflict Studies, Vol. 26, No. 1 (Summer 2006), p. 113. 54 Hersh, The Old Boys, pp. 271– 2. 55 Karalekas, History of the Central Intelligence Agency, pp. 46 – 7. 56 Miscamble, George F. Kennan and the Making of American Foreign Policy, p. 112; United States Senate, Foreign and Military Intelligence, Book I, Final Report of the Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities (Washington, 1976), p. 107. 57 Thomas, The Very Best Men, p. 11. 58 ‘List of Department of State and Foreign Service Personnel Having Knowledge of Political Warfare Operations’, (undated), RG 59, PPS, Box 11A, NARA. 59 Michael Warner, ‘The CIA’s Office of Policy Coordination: From NSC 10/2 to NSC 68’, Intelligence and Counter-Intelligence 11, No. 2 (Summer 1998), p. 213. 60 Ray S. Cline, Secrets, Spies and Scholars: Blueprint of the Essential CIA (Washington, 1977), p. 103; William R. Corson, The Armies of Ignorance: the Rise of the American Intelligence Empire (New York, 1977), pp. 308– 9; Thomas, The Very Best Men, pp. 15 – 16, 40. 61 Corke, ‘George Kennan and the Inauguration of Political Warfare’, pp. 113–14; Hersh, The Old Boys, p. 271; Leonard Mosley, Dulles: A Biography of Eleanor, Allen, and John Foster Dulles and their Family Network (London, 1978), pp. 244–5. 62 Colby, Honourable Men, p. 73. 63 Thomas, The Very Best Men, pp. 39 – 40. 64 Central Intelligence Agency Act of 1949, 20 June 1949, Warner, The CIA under Harry Truman, document 53. 65 Center for the Study of Intelligence, The Origin and Development of the CIA in the Administration of Harry S. Truman (Washington, 1995), p. 50. 66 Center for the Study of Intelligence, The Origin and Development of the CIA in the Administration of Harry S. Truman (Washington, 1995), p. 50. 67 Center for the Study of Intelligence, The Origin and Development of the CIA in the Administration of Harry S. Truman, pp. 66 – 7. 68 Houston to Hillenkoetter, ‘Responsibility and Control for OPC’, 19 October 1948, in Warner, The CIA under Harry Truman, document 46. 69 D. H. Berger, ‘The Use of Covert Paramilitary Activity as a Policy Tool: An Analysis of Operations Conducted by the United States Central Intelligence Agency, 1949– 1951’, http://www.fas.org/irp/eprint/berger.htm. 70 Thomas, The Very Best Men, pp. 40 – 1.

320

NOTES TO PAGES 170 –176

71 Gregory F. Treverton, The CIA and the Limits of American Intervention in the Postwar World (London, 1988), pp. 37 – 8. 72 Karalekas, History of the Central Intelligence Agency, p. 45. 73 Corson, The Armies of Ignorance, pp. 314– 15. 74 Corson, The Armies of Ignorance, pp. 313– 14. 75 Karalekas, History of the Central Intelligence Agency, p. 46. 76 Corson, The Armies of Ignorance, p. 313. 77 Karalekas, History of the Central Intelligence Agency, pp. 45 – 6. 78 Corson, The Armies of Ignorance, p. 326. 79 See Len Scott, ‘Secret Intelligence, Covert Action and Clandestine Diplomacy’, Intelligence and National Security, Vol. 19, No. 2 (Summer 2004), pp. 322– 41. 80 Berger, ‘The Use of Covert Paramilitary Activity as a Policy Tool.’ 81 Harry Rositzke, The CIA’s Secret Operations: Espionage, Counterespionage, and Covert Action (Boulder, 1988), pp. 16 – 23. 82 Nicholas Bethell, The Great Betrayal: The Untold Story of Kim Philby’s Biggest Coup (London, 1984); Michael W. Dravis, ‘Storming Fortress Albania: American Covert Operations in Microcosm, 1949– 54’, Intelligence and National Security, Vol. 7, No. 4 (1992), pp. 425– 42. 83 Bethell, The Great Betrayal, pp. 3–4, 36–7; Richard J. Aldrich, The Hidden Hand: Britain, America and Cold War Secret Intelligence (London, 2002), pp. 152–3. 84 Bethell, The Great Betrayal, p. 113; Dravis, ‘Storming Fortress Albania’, p. 431. 85 Hersh, The Old Boys, p. 254. 86 Acheson and Bevin memorandum of conversation, 14 September 1949, FRUS: Eastern Europe; The Soviet Union, 1949, Volume V (Washington, 1976), pp. 315– 16. Also see Beatrice Heuser, ‘Covert Action within British and American Concepts of Containment, 1948– 1951’, in Richard J. Aldrich (ed.), British Intelligence, Strategy and the Cold War, 1945– 1951 (London, 1992), pp. 70 – 1. 87 Miscamble takes a contrary view that the participation of Joyce, Davies and Kennan in the OPC’s planning of the Albanian operations demonstrates a broader experience of joint development of Soviet bloc projects. Miscamble, George F. Kennan and the Making of American Foreign Policy, p. 210. 88 Acheson to Embassy in Italy, 25 August 1949; Campbell policy paper, ‘Albania’, 12 September 1949, in FRUS, 1949, Volume V, pp. 310, 311– 13. 89 Perkins to Acheson, 13 September 1949, in FRUS, 1949, Volume V, pp. 314–15. 90 Heuser, ‘Covert Action’, p. 71. 91 Campbell memorandum of conversation with Albanian Minister to France Behar Shytella, 14 May 1949, and Hickerson to Rusk, 16 May 1949, FRUS, 1949, Volume V, pp. 299–302, 302– 3. 92 Rositzke, The CIA’s Secret Operations, p. 172. 93 Dravis, ‘Storming Fortress Albania’, p. 436. 94 Heuser, ‘Covert Action’, p. 71; Corke, US Covert Operations, p. 94. 95 Bethell, The Great Betrayal, p. 118. 96 Thomas, The Very Best Men, p. 72. 97 Hersh, The Old Boys, p. 256.

NOTES TO PAGES 177 –185

321

98 PSB D –31 ‘A Strategic Concept for a National Psychological Program with particular reference to Cold War Operations under NSC 10/2’, 26 November 1952, FRUS, The Intelligence Community 1950– 1955, document 139. 99 OCB Working Group ‘List of Agreed Courses of Action July 1, 1954 to December 31, 1954 to implement NSC 174’, 25 August 1954, FRUS, The Intelligence Community 1950– 1955, document 190. 100 Bethell, The Great Betrayal, pp. 191– 2. 101 Robin W. Winks, Cloak and Gown: Scholars in the Secret War, 1939– 1961 (New Haven and London, 1987), p. 399. 102 Bethell, The Great Betrayal, p. 197. 103 Aldrich, The Hidden Hand, pp. 163–4; Dravis, ‘Storming Fortress Albania’, p. 429; Hersh, The Old Boys, p. 245. 104 Beatrice Heuser, Western ‘Containment’ Policies in the Cold War: the Yugoslav Case, 1948– 53 (London and New York, 1989), p. 45. 105 See Aldrich, The Hidden Hand, 163; Grose, Operation Rollback, pp. 152– 4; Heuser, ‘Covert Action’, pp. 72 – 3. 106 Heuser, Western ‘Containment’ Policies, p. 46. 107 Cannon to Acheson, 31 January 1949, FRUS, 1949, Volume V, pp. 856– 9. 108 Rositzke, The CIA’s Secret Operations, p. 169. 109 Aldrich, The Hidden Hand, pp. 165– 6. 110 Aldrich, The Hidden Hand, p. 167. 111 Joyce to Matthews, 31 December 1952, FRUS, The Intelligence Community 1950– 1955, document 142. 112 Joyce to Matthews, 31 December 1952, FRUS, The Intelligence Community 1950– 1955, document 142. 113 Aldrich, The Hidden Hand, p. 168. 114 Grose, Operation Rollback, pp. 147–8; Thomas, The Very Best Men, pp. 25, 33–5. 115 Jeffrey Burds, The Early Cold War in Soviet West Ukraine, 1944– 1948 (Pittsburgh, 2001), p. 18. 116 Thomas, The Very Best Men, p. 60. 117 Christopher Simpson, Blowback: America’s Recruitment of Nazis and its Effects on the Cold War (New York, 1988), p. 159. 118 Aldrich, The Hidden Hand, p. 168. 119 Burds, The Early Cold War in Soviet West Ukraine, p. 17. 120 Rositzke, The CIA’s Secret Operations, p. 169. 121 Burds, The Early Cold War in Soviet West Ukraine, pp. 17 – 18. 122 Thomas, The Very Best Men, p. 67. 123 Burds, The Early Cold War in Soviet West Ukraine, p. 43.

322

NOTES TO PAGES 187 –197

Chapter 5 Disorder over design 1 Joyce to Matthews, 31 December 1952; Joyce to Matthews (Annex 1), 26 January 1953; in United States Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS): The Intelligence Community 1950– 1955 (Washington, 2007), documents 142 and 145. 2 NSC 114/1 ‘Status and Timing of Current U.S. Programs for National Security’, 8 August 1951, FRUS, National Security Affairs; Foreign Economic Policy, 1951, Volume I (Washington, 1979), pp. 127–53. 3 Houston memorandum for the record, 29 August 1950, FRUS: The Intelligence Community 1950– 1955, document 23. 4 Wisner to Smith, ‘Interpretation of NSC 10/2 and Related Matters’, 12 October 1952, in Michael Warner (ed.), CIA Cold War Records: The CIA under Harry Truman (Washington, 1994), document 64. 5 IAC meeting, 20 October 1950, FRUS: The Intelligence Community 1950– 1955, document 29. 6 Paul H. Nitze Oral History, Harry S. Truman Library, Independence Missouri (HSTL), pp. 244– 5. 7 NSC 68, ‘United States Objectives and Programs for National Security’, 14 April 1950, FRUS, National Security Affairs; Foreign Economic Policy, 1950, Volume I (Washington, 1977), pp. 234–92. 8 W. Scott Lucas, Freedom’s War: The US Crusade against the Soviet Union 1945– 1956 (Manchester, 1999), p. 87. 9 Melvyn P. Leffler, A Preponderance of Power: National Security, the Truman Administration, and the Cold War (Stanford, 1992), p. 356; Gregory Mitrovich, Undermining the Kremlin: America’s Strategy to Subvert the Soviet Bloc, 1947– 1956 (London and Ithaca, 2000), p. 57. 10 Sarah-Jane Corke, US Covert Operations and Cold War Strategy: Truman, Secret Warfare and the CIA (London, 2008), pp. 105– 8; Mitrovich, Undermining the Kremlin, pp. 47 –59. 11 Paul H. Nitze, From Hiroshima to Glasnost: At the Center of Decision: A Memoir (London, 1990), pp. 93 – 4. 12 Mitrovich, Undermining the Kremlin, p. 97. 13 Lucas, Freedom’s War, p. 78. 14 Nitze, From Hiroshima to Glasnost, p. 94. 15 Acheson, Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department (London, 1970), p. 374. 16 Lucas, Freedom’s War, p. 67. 17 Acheson, Present at the Creation, pp. 346– 9; John Lamberton Harper, American Visions of Europe: Franklin D. Roosevelt, George F. Kennan and Dean G. Acheson (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 224– 5; John Lukacs, George Kennan: A Study of Character (New Haven, 2007), pp. 81 – 2; David Mayers, George F. Kennan and the Dilemmas of US Foreign Policy (Oxford and New York, 1988), pp. 159–60; Nitze, From Hiroshima to Glasnost, pp. 86 – 92; Nitze, Oral History, HSTL, pp. 210– 19;

NOTES TO PAGES 197 –204

18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34

35

323

Anders Stephanson, Kennan and the Art of Foreign Policy (London and Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1989), pp. 149– 51. Nitze, From Hiroshima to Glasnost, pp. 97 – 8. Carolyn Woods Eisenberg, Drawing the Line: The American Decision to Divide Germany, 1944– 1949 (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 480– 1. PPS/37 ‘Policy Questions Concerning a Possible German Settlement’, 12 August 1948, in Anna Kasten Nelson (ed.), The State Department Policy Planning Staff Papers, Volume II, 1948 (New York, 1983), p. 332. See John Lewis Gaddis, Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of Postwar American National Security Policy (Oxford, 2005). Michael Warner, ‘The CIA’s Office of Policy Coordination: From NSC 10/2 to NSC 68’, Intelligence and Counter-Intelligence 11, No. 2 (Summer 1998), p. 216. Hulick memorandum for the record, ‘Policy Guidance’, 19 April 1950, Warner, The CIA under Harry Truman, document 58. Emphasis in original. Gerald Miller, ‘Office of Policy Coordination: 1948– 1952’ (CIA FOIA), pp. 46 – 7. Miller, ‘Office of Policy Coordination’, p. 47; Mitrovich, Undermining the Kremlin, p. 58. Hulick memorandum for the record, ‘Policy Guidance’, 19 April 1950; Warner, The CIA under Harry Truman, document 58. Wisner memorandum, 8 May 1950, FRUS: The Intelligence Community 1950– 1955, document 8. Foreign and Military Intelligence, Book I, Final Report of the Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities (Washington, 1976), pp. 106– 7. Foreign and Military Intelligence, Book I, pp. 23, 145. Foreign and Military Intelligence, Book I, pp. 146– 7. Mitrovich, Undermining the Kremlin, p. 56. John Prados, Presidents’ Secret Wars: CIA and Pentagon Covert Operations from World War II through Iranscam (New York, 1986), p. 81. Walter L. Hixson, Parting the Curtain: Propaganda, Culture, and the Cold War, 1945– 1961 (Basingstoke, 1997), p. 61. For more on RFE and RL see Arch Puddington, Broadcasting Freedom: The Cold War Triumph of Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty (Lexington, 2000), and G. R. Urban, Radio Free Europe and the Pursuit of Democracy: My War within the Cold War (London and New Haven, 1997). Also see Hixson, Parting the Curtain; Lucas, ‘Beyond Freedom, Beyond Control: Approaches to Culture and the State – Private Network in the Cold War’, Intelligence and National Security, Vol. 18, No. 2 (2003), pp. 57 – 72; Lucas, Freedom’s War; Frances Stonor Saunders, Who Paid the Piper? The CIA and the Cultural Cold War (London, 1999); Giles Scott-Smith, The Politics of Apolitical Culture: The Congress for Cultural Freedom, the CIA and Postwar American Hegemony (London, 2002); Giles Scott-Smith, ‘The “Masterpieces of the Twentieth Century” Festival and the Congress for Cultural Freedom: Origins and

324

36 37

38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53

54

NOTES TO PAGES 204 –212

Consolidation 1947–52’, Intelligence and National Security, Vol. 15, No. 1 (Spring 2000), pp. 121–43; Michael Warner, ‘Origins of the Congress for Cultural Freedom, 1949–50’, Studies in Intelligence, Vol. 38, No. 5 (1995), pp. 89–98; Hugh Wilford, ‘Playing the CIA’s Tune? The New Leader and the Cultural Cold War’, Diplomatic History, Vol. 27, No. 1 (January 2003), pp. 15–34. Foreign and Military Intelligence, Book I, Final Report, p. 145. Ludwell Lee Montague, General Walter Bedell Smith as Director of Central Intelligence: October 1950–February 1953 (University Park, Pennsylvania, 1992), p. 77–9, 217–27; Smith to CIA Deputy Directors, ‘Organization of CIA Clandestine Services’, 15 July 1952, in Warner, The CIA under Harry Truman, document 79. Evan Thomas, The Very Best Men: Four Who Dared: The Early Years of the CIA (New York, 1995), p. 42. Smith to Bradley, 2 March 1951, FRUS: The Intelligence Community 1950– 1955, document 54. Lay to NSC, 9 April 1951 (Smith memorandum of the same date enclosed), FRUS: The Intelligence Community 1950– 1955, document 63. NSC 10/4 ‘Responsibilities of CIA (OPC) with respect to Guerrilla Warfare’, 16 January 1951, FRUS: The Intelligence Community 1950– 1955, document 42. Joyce to Jessup, 16 January 1951, FRUS: The Intelligence Community 1950– 1955, document 43. Armstrong to Nitze, 26 May 1951, FRUS: The Intelligence Community 1950– 1955, document 70. Joyce to Nitze, 21 June 1951, FRUS: The Intelligence Community 1950– 1955, document 75. Smith to NSC ‘Scope and Pace of Covert Operations’, 8 May 1951, FRUS: The Intelligence Community 1950– 1955, document 68. Montague, General Walter Bedell Smith, pp. 209– 10. Smith to NSC ‘Scope and Pace of Covert Operations’, 8 May 1951, FRUS: The Intelligence Community 1950– 1955, document 68. NSC Senior Staff Meeting, 28 May 1951, FRUS: The Intelligence Community 1950– 1955, document 71. Montague, General Walter Bedell Smith, p. 210. NSC 10/5 ‘Scope and Pace of Covert Operations’, 23 October 1951, in Warner, The CIA under Harry Truman, document 73. Smith to NSC, ‘Report by the Director of Central Intelligence’, 23 April 1952, FRUS: The Intelligence Community 1950– 1955, document 107. Warner, The CIA under Harry Truman, document 78; Montague, General Walter Bedell Smith, pp. 213, 204, 208. Presidential Directive to the US Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense and the Director of Central Intelligence, 4 April 1951, RG 59, PPS, Box 11A, National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, Maryland (NARA). Nitze to Webb, 9 April 1951, RG 59, PPS, Box 11A, NARA; Allan A. Needell, ‘“Truth Is Our Weapon”: Project TROY, Political Warfare, and

NOTES TO PAGES 212 –219

55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74

325

Government – Academic Relations in the National Security State’, Diplomatic History, Vol. 17, No. 1 (Spring 1993), p. 415. Montague, General Walter Bedell Smith, pp. 213– 27. Allen to PSB, 20 February 1952, FRUS: The Intelligence Community 1950– 1955, document 104. Barnes memorandum ‘Briefing to the Psychological Strategy Board on some 10/5 Problems’, 7 May 1952, FRUS: The Intelligence Community 1950– 1955, document 108. Joyce to Bruce, 15 October 1952, FRUS: The Intelligence Community 1950– 1955, document 129. Joyce to Riddleberger, 10 October 1952, FRUS: The Intelligence Community 1950– 1955, document 130. Horsey to Matthews (Annex 2 in Joyce memorandum to Matthews, 27 January 1953), 26 January 1953, FRUS: The Intelligence Community 1950– 1955, document 145. Lay to NSC, 13 November 1952 (Smith Memorandum to PSB Members, 30 October 1952, as annex) FRUS: The Intelligence Community 1950– 1955, document 135. Barrett to Webb, 14 May 1951, FRUS: The Intelligence Community 1950– 1955, document 67. PSB meeting, 2 July 1951, FRUS: The Intelligence Community 1950– 1955, document 78. PSB meeting, 13 August 1951, FRUS: The Intelligence Community 1950– 1955, document 82. Bureau of the Budget report ‘The Psychological Strategy Board: Selected Aspects of its Concept, Organization and Operations’, 21 April 1952, RG 59, PSB Working File, Box 1, NARA. Barrett to Acheson, 13 February 1951, FRUS: The Intelligence Community 1950– 1955, document 49. Webb to Lawton, 15 March 1951, RG 59 PSB Working File, Box 4, NARA. Nitze to Webb, 9 April 1951, FRUS: The Intelligence Community 1950– 1955, document 62. Nitze to Webb, 9 April 1951, FRUS: The Intelligence Community 1950– 1955, document 62. Gordon Gray Oral History, HSTL. NSC 10/5 ‘Scope and Pace of Covert Operations’, 23 October 1951, in Warner, The CIA under Harry Truman, document 73. Mitrovich, Undermining the Kremlin, pp. 83 – 121. Nitze to Webb, 3 August 1951, FRUS: The Intelligence Community 1950– 1955, document 81. PSB memorandum ‘National Psychological Strategy’, 15 November 1951, RG 59, PPS, Box 11A, NARA. Also see draft PSB memorandum ‘Psychological Strategy in the Ensuing Years’, 2 November (same location).

326

NOTES TO PAGES 219 –224

75 PSB Director’s Group meeting, 6 November 1951, United States Declassified Document Reference System (DDRS) (Woodbridge, 1991), p. 3539. 76 PSB – PPS meeting, 5 December 1951, FRUS: The Intelligence Community 1950– 1955, document 96. 77 Barnes memorandum ‘Briefing to the Psychological Strategy Board on some 10/5 Problems’, 7 May 1952, FRUS: The Intelligence Community 1950– 1955, document 108. 78 Joyce to Bruce, 22 May 1952, FRUS: The Intelligence Community 1950– 1955, document 111. 79 Barnes memorandum ‘Briefing to the Psychological Strategy Board on some 10/5 Problems’, 7 May 1952, FRUS: The Intelligence Community 1950– 1955, document 108. Also see Lucas, Freedom’s War, p. 145. 80 Barnes memorandum ‘Briefing to the Psychological Strategy Board on some 10/5 Problems’, 7 May 1952, FRUS: The Intelligence Community 1950– 1955, document 108. 81 Joyce to Bruce, 22 May, 1952, FRUS: The Intelligence Community 1950– 1955, document 111. 82 Montague, General Walter Bedell Smith, p. 209; Mitrovich, Undermining the Kremlin, pp. 114–16. 83 Lucas, Freedom’s War, pp. 144– 6. 84 Nitze to Matthews, 7 July 1952, FRUS, National Security Affairs, 1952– 1954, Volume II Part 1 (Washington, 1984), document 13. 85 Joyce to Bruce, 15 October 1952, FRUS: The Intelligence Community 1950– 1955, document 129. 86 W. Scott Lucas, ‘The Myth of Leadership: Dwight Eisenhower and the Quest for Liberation’, in Constantine Pagedas and Thomas Otte (eds.), Personalities, War and Diplomacy (1997), p. 162. 87 Marshall to Nitze, ‘Psychological Strategy Board’, 29 July 1951, RG 59, PPS, Box 11A, NARA. Also see Nitze to Webb, 3 August 1951, RG 59, PPS, Box 11A, NARA. 88 Marshall to Nitze, ‘PSB Paper “To Formulate a National Psychological Strategy”, dated November 15, 1951, copy 3’, 19 November 1951, RG 59, PPS, Box 11A, NARA. 89 Nitze to Webb, 3 August 1951, RG 59, PPS, Box 11A, NARA. Also see W. Scott Lucas, ‘Campaigns of Truth: The Psychological Strategy Board and American Ideology, 1951– 1953’, The International History Review, Vol. 18, No. 2 (May 1996), p. 288, Lucas, Freedom’s War, pp. 130 –44, Montague, General Walter Bedell Smith, pp. 204– 6, 212– 13. 90 Bureau of the Budget report ‘The Psychological Strategy Board: Selected Aspects of its Concept, Organization and Operations’, 21 April 1952, RG 59, PSB Working File, Box 1, NARA. 91 Ferguson to Bruce, ‘PSB Agenda Item, PSB D – 30, Status Report on the National Psychological Effort and First Progress Report on the Psychological Strategy Board’, 6 August 1952, RG 59, PPS, Box 11A, NARA.

NOTES TO PAGES 224 –232

327

92 Marshall to Nitze, ‘PSB Paper “To Formulate a National Psychological Strategy”, dated November 15, 1951, copy 3’, 19 November 1951, RG 59, PPS, Box 11A, NARA. 93 Gordon Gray Oral History, HSTL. 94 Joyce to Bruce, 15 October 1952, FRUS: The Intelligence Community 1950– 1955, document 129. 95 PSB ‘Status Report on the National Psychological Effort and First Progress Report of the Psychological Strategy Board’, 1 August 1952, DDRS (1992), p. 1715. 96 Lay to NSC, 19 August 1952, FRUS: The Intelligence Community 1950– 1955, document 127. 97 Lay to NSC, 19 August 1952, FRUS: The Intelligence Community 1950– 1955, document 127. 98 NSC 135/1 ‘Reappraisal of United States Objectives and Strategy for National Security’, 15 August 1952, FRUS, 1952–1954, Volume II Part 1, document 16. 99 Joyce to Matthews, 31 December 1952, FRUS: The Intelligence Community 1950– 1955, document 142. 100 NSC 135/1 ‘Reappraisal of United States Objectives and Strategy for National Security’, 15 August 1952, FRUS, 1952–1954, Volume II Part 1, document 16. 101 PSB D-31 ‘A Strategic Concept for a National Psychological Program with particular reference to Cold War Operations under NSC 10/5’, 26 November 1952, FRUS: The Intelligence Community 1950– 1955, document 139. 102 Thomas, The Very Best Men, pp. 70 – 2. 103 Peter Grose, Operation Rollback: America’s Secret War Behind the iron curtain (Boston, 2000), p. 188. 104 Thomas Powers, The Man who Kept the Secrets: Richard Helms and the CIA (New York, 1979), p. 45. 105 Nicholas Bethell, The Great Betrayal: The Untold Story of Kim Philby’s Biggest Coup (London, 1984), p. 189. 106 Joyce to Matthews, 31 December 1952, FRUS: The Intelligence Community 1950– 1955, document 142. 107 Joyce to Matthews, 31 December 1952, FRUS: The Intelligence Community 1950– 1955, document 142. 108 NSC 135/3 ‘Reappraisal of United States Objectives and Strategy for National Security’, 25 September 1952, FRUS, 1952– 1954, Volume II Part 1, document 29, Mitrovich, Undermining the Kremlin, p. 98. 109 NSC 141 ‘Reexamination of United States Programs for National Security’, 19 January 1953, FRUS, 1952– 1954, Volume II Part 1, document 42. 110 Gaddis, Strategies of Containment, p. 124. 111 Mitrovich, Undermining the Kremlin, pp. 83 – 101; Robert Bowie and Richard Immerman, Waging Peace: How Eisenhower Shaped an Enduring Cold War Strategy (New York and Oxford, 1998), pp. 28 – 33. 112 Mitrovich, Undermining the Kremlin, p. 98.

328

NOTES TO PAGES 232 –240

113 Nitze to Acheson ‘Re-examination of United States Programs for National Security’, 12 January 1953, FRUS, 1952–1954, Volume II Part 1, document 40. 114 Princeton, New Jersey ‘Draft #3’, 11 May 1952, RG 59, Bohlen Papers, Box 8, NARA. Also see Lucas, Freedom’s War, pp. 152– 4. 115 Untitled document (guest list and background material for Princeton Meeting), May 1952, RG 59, Bohlen Papers, Box 8, NARA. 116 Joyce to Matthews, 27 January 1953, FRUS: The Intelligence Community 1950– 1955, document 145.

Chapter 6

Assuming the Mantle

1 Bennet Kovrig, Of Walls and Bridges: the United States and Eastern Europe (London and New York, 1991), p. 46. 2 Richard H. Immerman, John Foster Dulles: Piety, Pragmatism, and Power in U.S. Foreign Policy (Wilmington, 1999), p. 42; Immerman (ed.), John Foster Dulles and the Diplomacy of the Cold War (Princeton, 1990), p. 4. 3 Athan G. Theoharis, The Yalta Myths: An Issue in U.S. Politics, 1945– 1955 (Columbia, 1970), pp. 23 – 153. 4 John Lewis Gaddis, Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of Postwar American National Security Policy (Oxford, 2005), p. 128; Henry Brands, Cold Warriors: Eisenhower’s Generation and American Foreign Policy (New York, 1988), pp. 10 – 13; Peter Grose, Operation Rollback: America’s Secret War Behind the iron curtain (Boston, 2000), p. 204. 5 Kovrig, Of Walls and Bridges, p. 48. 6 W. Scott Lucas, Freedom’s War: the US Crusade against the Soviet Union 1945– 1956 (Manchester, 1999), p. 165. 7 Ronald R. Krebs, Dueling Visions: US Strategy toward Eastern Europe Under Eisenhower (Texas, 2001), p. 20. 8 Eisenhower to Jackson, 24 January 1953, United States Declassified Document Reference System (DDRS) (Woodbridge, 1987), p. 1120. 9 Editorial note, United States Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), National Security Affairs, 1952– 1954, Volume II Part 1 (Washington, 1984), document 76. 10 Report to the President by the President’s Committee on International Information Activities, 30 June 1953, FRUS, National Security Affairs, 1952– 1954, Volume II Part 2 (Washington, 1984), document 368. 11 Smith to NSC ‘Scope and Pace of Covert Operations’, 8 May 1951, FRUS: The Intelligence Community 1950– 1955 (Washington, 2007), document 68. 12 Report to the President by the President’s Committee on International Information Activities, 30 June 1953, FRUS, National Security Affairs, 1952– 1954, Volume II Part 2 (Washington, 1984), document 368.

NOTES TO PAGES 240 –245

329

13 Kovrig, Of Walls and Bridges, p. 63. Also see Grose, Operation Rollback, pp. 210– 212; Walter L. Hixson, Parting the Curtain: Propaganda, Culture, and the Cold War, 1945– 1961 (Basingstoke, 1997), pp. 69 – 70. 14 Bohlen testimony to Jackson Committee, 24 February 1953, FRUS, Eastern Europe; Soviet Union; Mediterranean, 1952– 1954, Volume VIII (Washington, 1988), pp. 54 – 55. 15 NSC 143/2 ‘A Volunteer Freedom Corps’, 20 May 1953, FRUS, 1952– 1954, Volume VIII, pp. 213– 18. 16 Vojtech Mastny, The Cold War and Soviet Insecurity (New York, 1996), p. 179. 17 Gregory Mitrovich, Undermining the Kremlin: America’s Strategy to Subvert the Soviet Bloc, 1947– 1956 (London and Ithaca, 2000), p. 126. 18 Lay to NSC, 19 August 1952, FRUS: The Intelligence Community 1950– 1955, document 142. 19 PSB D-47 ‘Status Report on the National Psychological Effort as of June 30 1953’, 29 July 1953, FRUS: The Intelligence Community 1950– 1955, document 153. 20 Mitrovich, Undermining the Kremlin, p. 128. 21 NSC meeting, 31 March 1953, FRUS, 1952– 1954, Volume II Part 1, document 52. 22 Eisenhower, ‘Chance for Peace’ address delivered before the American Society of Newspaper Editors, 16 April 1953, www.eisenhower.utexas.edu/chance.htm (accessed June 2012). 23 For more on Chance for Peace, Atoms for Peace and Open Skies as psychological warfare initiatives, see Michael J. Hogan, ‘Eisenhower and Open Skies: A Case in “Psychological Warfare”’, in Martin J. Medhurst (ed.), Eisenhower’s War of Words: Rhetoric and Leadership (East Lansing, Michigan, 1994), pp. 137 – 55; Kenneth A. Osgood, ‘Form Before Substance: Eisenhower’s Commitment to Psychological Warfare and Negotiations with the Enemy’, Diplomatic History 24, (Summer 2000), pp. 405 – 33, idem., Total Cold War: Eisenhower’s Secret Propaganda Battle at Home and Abroad (Lawrence, 2006). 24 Vladislav M. Zubok and Constantine Pleshakov, Inside the Kremlin’s Cold War: From Stalin to Khrushchev (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1996), p. 155. 25 PSB ‘Soviet Lures and Pressures since Stalin’s Death March 5 to 25, 1953’, 26 March 1953, DDRS (1986), p. 3571. 26 Robert Bowie and Richard Immerman, Waging Peace: How Eisenhower Shaped an Enduring Cold War Strategy (New York and Oxford, 1998), p. 120. 27 PSB D-47 ‘Status Report on the National Psychological Effort as of June 30 1953’, 29 July 1953, FRUS: The Intelligence Community 1950– 1955, document 153. 28 Charles E. Bohlen, Witness to History, 1929– 1969 (New York, 1973), p. 371. 29 NSC 5608/1 ‘Statement of Policy on U.S. Policy Toward the Soviet Satellites in Eastern Europe’, 18 July 1956, FRUS, Eastern Europe, 1955– 1957, Volume XXV (Washington, 1990), document 80.

330

NOTES TO PAGES 245 –251

30 The post-Stalin Soviet leadership intended for the New Course to be a more liberal approach than Ulbricht’s hardline policy to Sovietise the German Democratic Republic that had been implemented in July 1952, following the Federal Democratic Republic’s codified alignment with the West under the Bonn and EDC Treaties. But the New Course did not address the issue of raised productivity quotas, meaning that workers were being forced to work longer hours for the same wages. Therefore, this was not raising living standards for ordinary East Germans, as seemingly promised under the New Course. For more on the causes of the East German uprising see Christian Ostermann, ‘“Keep the Pot Simmering”: the United States and the East German Uprising of 1953’, German Studies Review, Vol. 19, No. 1 (February 1996), pp. 61 – 89. 31 Christian Ostermann, ‘The United States, the East German Uprising of 1953, and the Limits of Rollback’, Working Paper No. 11, Cold War International History Project (Washington, 1994), p. 7. 32 See Christian F. Ostermann and Malcolm Byrne (eds.), Uprising in East Germany, 1953 (Budapest, 2001), p. 220. 33 NSC meeting, 18 June 1953, Ostermann and Byrne, Uprising in East Germany, pp. 225– 31. 34 Hixson, Parting the Curtain, p. 75. 35 Ostermann, ‘The United States, the East German Uprising of 1953, and the Limits of Rollback’, p. 4. 36 NSC 158 ‘United States Objectives and Actions to Exploit the Unrest in the Satellite States’, 29 June 1953, in Ostermann and Byrne, Uprising in East Germany, pp. 332– 4. 37 FRUS, 1952– 1954, Volume VIII, pp. 82 – 6. 38 Watts memorandum, 12 August 1953, FRUS, 1952– 1954, Volume II Part 1, document 82. 39 NSC meeting, 7 October 1953, FRUS, 1952– 1954, Volume II Part 1, document 93. 40 Richard J. Aldrich, The Hidden Hand: Britain, America and Cold War Secret Intelligence (London, 2002), p. 335. 41 NSC 162/2 ‘Statement of Policy by the National Security Council on Basic National Security Policy’, 30 October 1953, FRUS, 1952– 1954, Volume II, Part 1, document 100. 42 Bowie and Immerman, Waging Peace, pp. 161–3; Krebs, Dueling Visions, pp. 38–9. 43 NSC 162/2 ‘Statement of Policy by the National Security Council on Basic National Security Policy’, 30 October 1953, FRUS, 1952– 1954, Volume II, Part 1, document 100. 44 Executive Order 10483, 2 September 1953, FRUS: The Intelligence Community 1950– 1955, document 157. 45 Eisenhower to Lay, 2 September 1953, FRUS: The Intelligence Community 1950– 1955, document 158. 46 OCB meeting, 17 September 1953, FRUS: The Intelligence Community 1950– 1955, document 160.

NOTES TO PAGES 251 – 261

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47 Wisner to Dulles, 8 January 1954, FRUS: The Intelligence Community 1950– 1955, document 167. 48 Wisner to Dulles, 8 January 1954, FRUS: The Intelligence Community 1950– 1955, document 167. 49 Wisner to Dulles, 8 January 1954, FRUS: The Intelligence Community 1950– 1955, document 167. 50 OCB Working Group ‘List of Agreed Courses of Action July 1, 1954 to December 31, 1954 to implement NSC 174’, 25 August 1954, FRUS: The Intelligence Community 1950– 1955, document 190. 51 For example see NIE-99 ‘Estimate of the World Situation through 1955’, 23 October 1953, FRUS, 1952– 1954, Volume II, Part 1, document 96. 52 NSC 174 ‘United States Policy Toward the Soviet Satellites in Eastern Europe’, 11 December 1953, Ostermann and Byrne (eds.), Uprising in East Germany, pp. 396. 53 NSC 174 ‘United States Policy Toward the Soviet Satellites in Eastern Europe’, 11 December 1953, Ostermann and Byrne (eds.), Uprising in East Germany, p. 396. 54 NSC 5406/1 ‘United States Policy Towards Yugoslavia’, 6 February 1954, FRUS, 1952– 1954, Volume VIII, pp. 1373– 7. 55 Editorial note, FRUS, 1955– 1957, Volume XXV, document 15. 56 Bohlen to State, 7 June 1955, FRUS, 1955– 1957, Volume XXV, document 16. 57 NSC ‘Progress Report on United States Policy Toward the Soviet Satellites in Eastern Europe’, 16 July 1954, DDRS (1987), p. 2874. 58 Mitrovich, Undermining the Kremlin, p. 164. 59 NSC 5412 ‘Covert Operations’, 15 March 1954, FRUS: The Intelligence Community 1950– 1955, document 167. 60 OCB Working Group ‘List of Agreed Courses of Action July 1, 1954 to December 31, 1954 to implement NSC 174’, 25 August 1954, FRUS: The Intelligence Community 1950– 1955, document 190. 61 NSC 5412 ‘Covert Operations’, 15 March 1954, FRUS: The Intelligence Community 1950– 1955, document 167. 62 NSC 5412/1 ‘Covert Operations’, 12 March 1955, FRUS: The Intelligence Community 1950– 1955, document 212. 63 Editorial note, FRUS, National Security Policy, 1955– 1957, Volume XIX (Washington, 1990), document 16. 64 NSC 5412/2 ‘Covert Operations’, 28 December 1955, FRUS: The Intelligence Community 1950– 1955, document 250. 65 Eisenhower to Doolittle, 26 July 1954, FRUS: The Intelligence Community 1950– 1955, document 185. 66 Special Study Group ‘Report on the Covert Activities of the Central Intelligence Agency’, 30 September 1954, FRUS: The Intelligence Community 1950– 1955, document 192. 67 Dulles to NSC, 18 November 1954, FRUS, 1952– 1954, Volume II, Part 1, document 131.

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68 NSC meeting, 24 November 1954, FRUS, 1952– 1954, Volume II, Part 1, document 135. 69 NSC meeting, 21 December 1954, FRUS, 1952– 1954, Volume II, Part 1, document 141. 70 Eisenhower diary entry, 23 January 1956, FRUS, 1955– 1957, Volume XIX, document 53. 71 OCB Working Group ‘Analysis of the Situation with respect to Possible Detachment of a Major European Soviet Satellite’, 5 January 1955, FRUS: The Intelligence Community 1950– 1955, document 203. 72 NSC 5505/1 ‘Exploitation of Soviet and European Satellite Vulnerabilities’, 31 January 1955, FRUS, Soviet Union; Eastern Mediterranean, 1955 –1957, Volume XXIV (Washington, 1989), document 4. 73 OCB meeting, 5 January 1955, FRUS, 1955– 1957, Volume XXV, document 4. 74 NSC meeting, 27 January 1955, FRUS, 1955 – 1957, Volume XXIV, document 2. 75 Dulles to Eisenhower, 20 November 1956, FRUS, 1955– 1957, Volume XXV, document 199. 76 Bohlen to State, 7 July 1955; Embassy in Czechoslovakia to State, 14 June 1955; Embassy in Poland to State, 20 June 1955; Embassy in Poland to State, 6 July 1955; FRUS, 1955– 1957, Volume XXV, documents 16, 17, 18 and 19. 77 NSC meeting, 19 May 1955, DDRS (1986), p. 3400. 78 OCB ‘Progress Report on NSC 174, United States Policy toward the Soviet Satellites in Eastern Europe’, 29 February 1956, FRUS, 1955– 1957, Volume XXV, document 49. 79 See editorial note on NSC 5524/1 ‘Basic U.S. Policy in Relation to the Four Power Negotiations’, 11 July 1955, FRUS, 1955– 1957, Volume XXV, document 20. 80 National Intelligence Estimate 12 –56 ‘Probable Developments in the European Satellites through 1960’, 10 January 1956, FRUS, 1955– 1957, Volume XXV, document 45. 81 OCB report ‘Psychological Implications of Geneva for U.S. Information Programs’, 31 August 1955, FRUS, 1955– 1957, Volume XXV, document 29. 82 NSC 5524/1 ‘Basic U.S. Policy in Relation to the Four Power Negotiations’, 11 July 1955, FRUS, 1955– 1957, Volume XXV, document 20. 83 National Intelligence Estimate 12 –56 ‘Probable Developments in the European Satellites through 1960’, 10 January 1956, FRUS, 1955– 1957, Volume XXV, document 45. 84 OCB ‘Progress Report on NSC 174, United States Policy toward the Soviet Satellites in Eastern Europe’, 29 February 1956, FRUS, 1955– 1957, Volume XXV, document 49. 85 Excerpts of Khrushchev’s speech ‘On the Cult of Personality and its Consequences’ available at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2007/apr/ 26/greatspeeches2 (accessed June 2012).

NOTES TO PAGES 269 –279

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86 Jussi Hanhima¨ki and Odd Arne Westad, The Cold War: a History in Documents and Eyewitness Accounts (Oxford and New York, 2004), p. 249. 87 John Ranelagh, The Agency: the Rise and Decline of the CIA (Sevenoaks, 1988), pp. 285– 6. 88 NSC meeting, 22 March 1956, FRUS, 1955– 1957, Volume XXIV, document 34. 89 NSC meeting, 22 March 1956, FRUS, 1955– 1957, Volume XXV, document 50. 90 NSC meeting, 22 March 1956, FRUS, 1955– 1957, Volume XXV, document 50. 91 Hixson, Parting the Curtain, p. 78. 92 NSC 5602/1 ‘Basic National Security Policy’, 15 March 1956, FRUS, 1955– 1957, Volume XIX, document 66. 93 Johanna Granville ‘Reactions to the Events of 1956: New Findings from the Budapest and Warsaw Archives’, Journal of Contemporary History 38 (2003), pp. 264– 6. 94 Telephone conversation between Allen and John Foster Dulles, 28 June 1956, FRUS, 1955– 1957, Volume XXV, document 66. 95 Elbrick to Dulles, 10 July 1956, FRUS, 1955– 1957, Volume XXV, document 78. 96 NSC 5608/1 ‘U.S. Policy Toward the Soviet Satellites in Eastern Europe’, July 18 1956, FRUS, 1955– 1957, Volume XXV, document 80. 97 Appendix to NSC 5608/1 ‘U.S. Policy Toward the Soviet Satellites in Eastern Europe’, 18 July 1956, DDRS (1993), p. 2271. 98 Lucas, Freedom’s War, p. 252. 99 See editorial note, FRUS, 1955– 1957, Volume XXV, document 87. 100 Dulles to Eisenhower, 5 September 1956, FRUS, 1955– 1957, Volume XXV, document 88. 101 Csaba Be´ke´s, ‘The 1956 Hungarian Revolution and World Politics’, The Hungarian Quarterly 36 (Summer 1995), pp. 109 – 21. 102 PPS meeting, 23 October 1956, FRUS, 1955– 1957, Volume XXV, document 96. 103 Dulles telephone conversation with Lodge, 24 October 1956, FRUS, 1955– 1957, Volume XXV, document 104. 104 Thompson to State, 28 October 1956, FRUS, 1955– 1957, Volume XXV, document 129. 105 Kovrig, Of Walls and Bridges, pp. 95 – 6. 106 Eisenhower to Jackson, 19 November 1956, FRUS, 1955– 1957, Volume XXV, document 195. 107 Thompson to State, 28 October 1956; Dulles to US Embassy in Soviet Union, 29 October 1956; editorial note, FRUS, 1955 – 1957, Volume XXV, documents 129, 134 and 155. 108 NSC meeting, 26 October 1956, FRUS, 1955– 1957, Volume XXV, document 116.

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109 Eisenhower ‘Television and Radio Report to the American People on the Developments in Eastern Europe and the Middle East’, 31 October 1956, Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1956 (Washington, 1958), p. 1062. 110 Zubok and Pleshakov, Inside the Kremlin’s Cold War, p. 183. 111 NSC 5616 ‘U.S. Policy on Developments in Poland and Hungary’, 31 October 1956, FRUS, 1955– 1957, Volume XXV, document 151. 112 Bela K. Kira´ly and Paul Jo´na´s (eds.), The Hungarian Revolution of 1956 in Retrospect (New York, 1978), p. 146. 113 For accounts of the Hungarian Revolution see Csaba Be´ke´s, ‘Cold War, De´tente and the 1956 Hungarian Revolution’, Working Paper #7, ‘The Cold War as Global Conflict’ at the International Center for Advanced Studies, New York University (September 2002), idem., ‘The 1956 Hungarian Revolution and the Great Powers’, in Terry Cox (ed.), Hungary 1956 – Forty Years On (London and Portland, Oregon, 1997), idem., ‘The 1956 Hungarian Revolution and World Politics’; Granville, ‘Reactions to the Events of 1956’ and Mark Kramer, ‘The Soviet Union and the 1956 Crises in Hungary and Poland: Reassessments and New Findings’, Journal of Contemporary History 33 (April 1998), pp. 163 – 214. 114 NSC meeting, 8 November 1956, FRUS, 1955– 1957, Volume XXV, document 175. 115 Lodge and Dulles telephone conversations with Eisenhower, 9 November 1956, FRUS, 1955– 1957, Volume XXV, document 178. 116 Meeting of the Special Committee on Soviet and Related Problems, 13 November 1956, FRUS, 1955– 1957, Volume XXV, document 185. 117 MacArthur memorandum for the record, 21 November 1956, FRUS, 1955– 1957, Volume XXV, document 201. 118 Ferenc Fehe´r and Agnes Heller, Hungary 1956 Revisited: The Message of a Revolution – a Quarter of a Century After (London, 1983), p. 15. 119 Hoover to Hagerty, 15 December 1956, FRUS, 1955– 1957, Volume XXV, document 213. 120 Lodge and Dulles telephone conversations with Eisenhower, 9 November 1956, FRUS, 1955– 1957, Volume XXV, document 178. 121 Eisenhower ‘Television and Radio Report to the American People on the Developments in Eastern Europe and the Middle East’, 31 October 1956, Public Papers of the Presidents, p. 1062. 122 Editorial note, FRUS, 1955– 1957, Volume XXV, document 228. 123 Dulles to Eisenhower, 20 November 1956, FRUS, 1955– 1957, Volume XXV, document 199. 124 Meeting of the Special Committee on Soviet and Related Problems, 30 November 1956; Legation in Hungary to State, 18 December 1956, in FRUS, 1955– 1957, Volume XXV, documents 204 and 214. 125 Evan Thomas, The Very Best Men: Four Who Dared: The Early Years of the CIA (New York, 1995), pp. 146– 7.

NOTES TO PAGES 287 –295

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126 Meeting of the Special Committee on Soviet and Related Problems, 13 November 1956, FRUS, 1955– 1957, Volume XXV, document 185. 127 Grose, Operation Rollback, p. 219. 128 See editorial note, FRUS, Eastern Europe Region; Soviet Union; Cyprus, 1958–1960, Volume X, Part 1 (Washington, 1993), document 7. 129 NSC 5811/1 ‘Statement of U.S. Policy toward the Soviet-Dominated Nations in Eastern Europe’, 24 May 1958, FRUS, Eastern Europe Region; Soviet Union; Cyprus, 1958– 1960, Volume X, Part 1, document 6.

Conclusion 1 NSC 174 ‘United States Policy Toward the Soviet Satellites in Eastern Europe,’ 11 December 1953, Christian F. Ostermann and Malcolm Byrne (eds.), Uprising in East Germany, 1953 (Budapest, 2001), pp. 392– 406. 2 W. Scott Lucas, ‘The Myth of Leadership: Dwight Eisenhower and the Quest for Liberation’, in Constantine Pagedas and Thomas Otte (eds.), Personalities, War and Diplomacy (1997), p. 180. 3 For example, see Peter Grose, Operation Rollback: America’s Secret War Behind the iron curtain (Boston, 2000); W. Scott Lucas, Freedom’s War: the US Crusade against the Soviet Union 1945–1956 (Manchester, 1999); Gregory Mitrovich, Undermining the Kremlin: America’s Strategy to Subvert the Soviet Bloc, 1947–1956 (London and Ithaca, 2000); Kenneth A. Osgood, ‘Hearts and Minds: The Unconventional Cold War’, Journal of Cold War Studies, Vol. 4, Issue 2 (Spring 2002), pp. 85 – 107. 4 See Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones, The CIA and American Democracy (London and New Haven, 1989).

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INDEX

Acheson, Dean, Secretary of State, 99, 120, 123, 127, 191–2, 194 and Albania, 174–5 appointment as Secretary of State, 112 and containment policy, 97, 197– 9 and Marshall Plan, 95 Adams, Ware, 117– 19, 122 Adenauer, Konrad, West German Chancellor, 246 Advanced Study Group (ASG), 102– 3 Afghanistan, 295 Albania, 142, 172 Albanian National Committee, 178 anti-Soviet resistance in, 252 Operation Valuable/BGFIEND, 1, 173– 8, 180–1 Allen, George, Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs, 56–7, 64–5 American Committee for the Liberation of the Peoples of Russia, 203 Amory, Robert, 278 Angleton, James, 35, 44, 49, 53 Armstrong, W. Park, 207 Austria, 109, 117, 196, 244– 5 Austrian State Treaty, 266– 7 Bandera, Stepan, 182 Barnes, Tracy, PSB Deputy Director, 220– 1

Barrett, Edward, 215 Bateman, Charles, 179 Belgrade see Yugoslavia Benesˇ, Edvard, President of Czechoslovakia, 162 Berlin blockade of, 50, 52, 65, 96, 99, 106, 109– 11, 147, 149, 184, 196 as target of Soviet invasion, 186 Bethell, Nicholas, 177 Bevin, Ernest, British Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, 174– 5, 179 Bissell, Richard, ECA administrator, 160–1, 286 Bloodstone, 61 Blum, Robert, 64, 74, 81 Bohlen, Charles, 27– 8, 192, 231–2, 263 and ERP, 22 – 3, 33 and national communism, 136– 7 and Program A, 111 and PSB, 219, 223 and Stalin’s death, 245 and Titoism, 116, 129 and VFC, 241 Bowie, Robert, PPS Director, 249 Bradley, Omar, General, 112, 206, 208 British Russia Committee, 173 Bross, John, 181

350

THE CIA

AND THE

Brown, Irving, 35 Browne, Mallory, 222 Bruce, David, Under Secretary of State, 83 and Hungarian Revolution, 287 and PSB, 213, 220– 2, 224 Brussels Pact, 96 Budapest see Hungary Bulganin, Nikolai, 254 Bulgaria, 24, 142, 172 communist party in, 25 purges in, 162 and Radio Free Europe, 62, 203 unrest in, 245 Burds, Jeffrey, 185 Burke, Michael, 98, 183 Butler, George, 59 – 60, 63, 78, 119, 155 Caffery, Jefferson, US Ambassador to France, 33, 35 Campbell, John C., 116, 123– 4, 126 Cannon, Cavendish, US Ambassador to Yugoslavia, 116, 179– 80 Cannon, Clarence, 169 Cassady, Thomas, head of SPG, 64 – 6, 70, 83, 88 and activation of SPG, 48 – 50 replacement of, 85 Central Intelligence Agency Act (1949), 168– 9 Central Intelligence Group (CIG), 3, 29, 158, 188 and Clifford – Elsey Report, 18 – 20 and OSO, 18 – 20 and SPD/S, 18 Chapin, Selden, American Minister in Hungary, 24 China, 134, 199, 202, 218, 236, 261 Clay, Lucius, General, 35, 50, 111, 160 Clayton, Will, 23 Clifford, Clark, 19 Clifford– Elsey Report, 18 – 20

SOVIET BLOC

Cline, Ray, 28 Coffin, William Sloane, 183 Colby, William, 168 Cominform see Communist Information Bureau Comintern see Communist International Communist Information Bureau (Cominform), 38 – 9 establishment of, 25, 33, 35 and Yugoslavia, 113– 15, 129, 178, 180 Communist International (Comintern), 33 containment policy, 6, 8 – 12, 20 – 1, 28, 54, 58, 96 – 7, 108, 133, 144, 197 – 200, 209, 218, 222 – 3, 231, 235, 248 – 9, 251, 291, 293 Corson, William, 171 Council of Foreign Ministers (CFM), 97, 195 Cuba, 294 Cutler, Robert, National Security Adviser, 238– 9, 265 Czechoslovakia, 39, 117, 126, 172 Benesˇ government, fall of, 162 communist party in, 25 – 6 communist takeover of, 48, 50 – 2, 106, 264 and Radio Free Europe, 62, 203 and Slansky, Rudolf, 229 unrest in, 245 Davies, John Paton, 59, 64, 156 and foreign e´migre´s, 62 and national communism, 117– 19, 122– 5, 130– 2, 137– 8 and NSC 68 drafting, 193 and PPS/22, 60 and Project UMPIRE, 50 De Gasperi, Alcide, Prime Minister of Italy, 31, 35, 52 – 3 de´tente, 266– 71, 293– 4 Dewey, Thomas, 75, 134, 236– 7

INDEX diplomacy, use of, 5, 8 –9, 17, 97, 101, 140, 160, 178– 9, 198– 9, 223, 253, 267, 291 and Germany, 107– 8, 195–7, 288 and Poland, 181– 2 and Yugoslavia, 115, 179 see also de´tente; Program A Director of Special Studies, post of, 69 – 79 ‘dirty tricks’, 4, 42 Donovan, William, head of OSS, 38, 44, 83, 202 ‘Donovan tradition’, 2, 158, 296 n.5 Doolittle, James, General, 258– 60 Doolittle Report, 258– 60 Dravis, Michael, 176 Dulles, Allen, Director of CIA, 55, 152, 211– 12, 229, 232, 251 appointment as Director, 4, 238 criticism of government by, 260– 1 and Dulles–Jackson–Correa paper, 79 on evolution policy, 264– 5 and Hungarian Revolution, 279, 284 and ISG interim report, 74 – 9 and Khrushchev’s secret speech, 269– 71 and Lovett – Forrestal – Dulles meeting, 80 – 2 and OSP proposal, 89 and peacetime political warfare, initiation of, 64 –6 and PSB, 215 Dulles, John Foster, Secretary of State, 236– 8, 274– 5, 292 on evolution policy, 265 and Geneva Conference, 266 and Hungarian Revolution, 277– 8, 282– 4, 288 and Khrushchev’s secret speech, 271– 2 and OCB, 251, 255 on Soviet nuclear capability, 261– 3 and Stalin’s death, 242 and Tito, 254

351

Dunn, James Clement, US Ambassador to Italy, 35, 53 Economic Cooperation Administration (ECA), 26, 37, 96, 129, 160, 291 Eden, Anthony, British Prime Minister, 283 Eisenberg, Carolyn, 25 Eisenhower, Dwight D., US President, 126, 147, 182, 229, 232 and 5412 Committee (Special Group), 258– 60 and ‘Chance for Peace’ speech, 243–4 and containment policy, 249– 51 and de´tente, 268– 71, 293– 4 and Doolittle Report, 258– 60 and East Germany, 245– 7 and election (1952), 233– 4, 236– 8, 283 and election (1956), 274, 283 and evolution policy, 263– 7, 272, 275, 282 and Hungarian Revolution, 277– 88, 294 and information policies, review of, 238– 9 and New Look, 248– 50 and non-intervention policy, 276 and NSC 162/2, 248– 53 and OCB, 250– 6, 264 and PCG, 257– 8 and Project Solarium, 248– 9 and rollback policy, 249– 53, 255, 257, 263– 66, 275, 286, 289, 291– 94 and Stalin’s death, 242– 5, 247 and Tito, 254–5, 292 and VFC, 240– 1 Elbrick, C. Burke, 272 Elsey, George, 19 Estonia, 172 European Recovery Program (ERP), 11, 36, 44, 51 – 2, 57, 290 and Italy, 53 – 4

352

THE CIA

AND THE

launch of, 15, 21, 24, 26, 97, 108 and OPC, 160– 1, 168 ratification of, 47, 63, 95 Soviet rejection of, 21– 6, 33, 35, 110, 196, 198 success of, 23, 121, 145 see also Marshall Plan evolution policy, 9, 263–7, 272, 275, 282 Ferguson, John, 224 Finland, 19 Foreign Assistance Act, 22 Forrestal, James, US Secretary of Defense, 37 – 9, 58, 119, 194 and Director of Special Studies post, 77 and Lovett–Forrestal–Dulles meeting, 80–2 and military expenditures, 99 – 103 and OPC, 159– 60, 164 as originator of peacetime psychological warfare, 27 – 32, 48 and Special Services Unit proposal, 82 –5 Foster, William, Assistant Secretary of Defense, 220 France communist party in, 16, 22, 25 – 6, 33 –4, 38– 9, 44, 160 Germany, opposition to unification of, 111 Germany, rapprochement with, 96 Marshall aid in, 49 organised labour in, 160– 1 Frashe¨ri, Mithat, 178 Galloway, Donald, head of OSO, 44, 48 – 9, 81, 83, 85 Garson, Robert A., 108 Geneva Conference, 266– 7, 274 Germany, 244– 5 and communist ideology in, 16, 22

SOVIET BLOC

East, 109, 126 uprising in, 241, 245– 6, 252, 263, 269, 271, 273– 4, 282, 290 France, rapprochement with, 96 Nazi, 176, 179 OPC operation in, 159– 60 partition of, 7, 108–11, 122, 194, 198 political neutralisation of, 196– 7 pro-American opinion in, 35 and Program A, 107–13 rearmament of, 245 unification of, 107, 110– 13, 197, 266– 7, 294 West, 155, 186, 194, 282 Gero˝, Erno˝, 277 Gomulka, Wladyslaw, 126, 275– 6, 280, 287– 8 Gottwald, Klement, Prime Minister of Czechoslovakia, 50 Gray, Gordon, Director of PSB, 212, 218–19, 224 –5, 239 Greece, 16, 173, 176 civil war in, 175, 196 Greenway, Gilbert, 156 Gruenther, General, 81 Guatemala, 294 Harriman, Averell, US Ambassador to Soviet Union, 37 –8, 129, 160 Hayter, William, 174 Helms, Richard, 91, 93, 169, 176 Heuser, Beatrice, 178 Hickerson, John D., Director of Office of European Affairs, 52, 111 Hill, Arthur M., 83 Hillenkoetter, Roscoe, Director of CIA, 48– 9, 61, 65, 86 compromise proposal of, 79– 82, 85 decline of, 152 and Director of Special Studies post, 70 – 2, 74 – 7 and Italian elections, 54, 64 and Lovett –Forrestal – Dulles meeting, 81 – 2

INDEX and OPC, 149– 51, 156, 159, 169– 71, 189– 90, 207 and OSP proposal, 86 – 90, 92, 94 and peacetime psychological warfare, objection to, 4, 28 – 32, 36, 39 – 41, 43 – 4, 225 and SSU proposal, 82– 4 and Yugoslavia, 114 Hiss, Alger, 236 Hoffman, Paul, ECA administrator, 160 Hooker, Robert, 193 Horsey, Outerbridge, 213– 14 Houston, Lawrence, legal counsel to CIA, 29 – 31, 37, 151– 2, 169, 189 Hoxha, Enver, communist leader of Albania, 1, 142, 173–8 Hughes, Rowland, 258 Hungary, 124, 172, 266 Hungarian Revolution, 1, 10, 126, 185, 276– 88, 289– 90, 294 purges in, 162 and Radio Free Europe, 62, 203 Indochina, 244 Information Control Division (ICD), 35 Intelligence Advisory Committee (IAC), 84, 189 Intelligence Survey Group (ISG), 55, 64 – 5, 92, 152 conflict with CIA, 47 interim report, 74 – 9 Iran, 20, 294 Iraq, 295 Italy and communist party in, 16, 22, 25 – 6, 31 – 2, 34, 38 – 9, 44, 51 –3, 160 elections in, 35, 48, 52 – 4, 64 – 5, 67 –8, 196 and European Recovery Plan, 53 – 4 Marshall aid in, 49 organised labour in, 160– 1 Jackson, C.D., 232, 238– 9 and Hungarian Revolution, 278

353

and OCB, 251– 2 and Stalin’s death, 242 see also Jackson Committee Jackson, William H., 239 Jackson Committee, 230, 238– 41, 248, 250, 260 Jellicoe, Earl, 174 Johnson, Louis, US Secretary of Defense, 112, 202 Johnson, Lyndon B., US President, 258 Johnston, Kilbourne, Assistant Director of OPC, 220 Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), 57, 72, 77, 79– 81, 91, 93, 250 and OPC, 152, 159, 207 and PSB, 223 and Titoism, 129– 30 Joint Subsidiary Plans Committee (JSPC), 56 Josselson, Michael, 35 Joyce, Robert, 63, 121, 256 and Albania, 174, 320 n.87 and foreign e´migre´s, 62 and NSC 68, 201 and OSS, 156– 7 and Poland, 181– 2 and political warfare, criticism of, 230, 233– 4 and PPS/59, 123– 5 as PPS liaison officer to OPC, 156, 189, 207– 8 and PSB, 213– 14, 221– 2 Ka´da´r, Ja´nos, 279, 287 Karalekas, Anna, 171 Kennan, George F., director of PPS, 81 as architect of political warfare, 4, 11, 38 – 40, 60, 64, 72, 99, 195, 211, 290– 1 and CIG, 19 – 20 and Czechoslovakia, 51 decline of, 154– 7, 166 and Director of Special Studies post, 72 – 9

354

THE CIA

AND THE

and ERP, 22 – 3, 33, 44, 57, 108 Foreign Affair article of, 58, 60, 101, 307 n.38 and foreign e´migre´s, 62 and guerrilla warfare, 28 and Italy, 51 –2 Long Telegram of, 19, 39, 58 and national communism, 130– 1, 136– 7 and NSC 4-A, 42, 45, 47, 50, 55, 59 –60 and NSC 10/1, 89 – 90 and NSC 10/2, 88, 93, 99 and NSC 68, 192– 3 and OPC, authority over, 146– 57, 159, 164– 6, 190, 207, 317 nn.17– 18 and OSP proposal, 86 – 9, 93 and Program A, 107– 12, 154– 5, 193, 197, 199, 235, 288 as representative to NSC, 155 resignation of, 123 and rollback policy, 4 and Soviet bloc policy clarification, 99 –104, 107, 119– 22 and Titoism, 114, 118, 120– 3 and ULTIMATE, 65 – 6, 70 and unified European strategy, 196, 198 and Wisner, Frank, 157–8 Kennedy, John F., US President, 258 Kersten Amendment, 240 Khrushchev, Nikita, Soviet leader, 242, 254 and Hungarian Revolution, 280, 288 nationalist communism, recognition of, 265– 66, 275– 6 Stalin, denunciation of (secret speech), 269– 72, 284 Tito, relationship with, 274, 280 Warsaw, visit to, 275–6 Korean War, 4, 97, 138, 142– 3, 166– 7, 170, 236, 244

SOVIET BLOC effect on European political warfare, 97, 186– 8, 200, 202– 4, 216 and NSC 68, 248

Lasky, Melvin, 35 Latvia, 172 Lay, James, NSC Executive Secretary, 37, 40, 74, 86 – 7 Leahy, William, Chief of Staff, 28 Leka, Prince of Albania, 1 Leonhart, William K., 116 Lindsay, Franklin, 28, 156, 174, 181, 183 criticism of political warfare by, 228– 9, 256 Lithuania, 172 Lodge, Henry Cabot, US Ambassador to UN, 277, 282– 3 London Accords, 111– 12 London conference of US ministers to Eastern Europe, 127– 32 London Council of Foreign Ministers, 25 Losonczy, Ge´za, 279 Lovestone, Jay, 35 Lovett, Robert, Under Secretary of State, 27–8, 40, 56–7, 60, 66, 100 and Director of Special Studies post, 71 – 3, 76 – 9 and ERP, 33 and Hungarian Revolution, 287 and Italy, 31 and Lovett –Forrestal – Dulles meeting, 80 – 2 and NSC 10/2, 92 and OPC, 150, 152, 157, 159– 60 and Project UMPIRE, 49 – 50 and PSB, 212 and SSU proposal, 82 – 5, 87, 90 and Titoism, 114 Lucas, Scott, 193 MacArthur, Douglas, General, 202 Magruder, John, 181, 189, 207–8, 215, 317 n.17

INDEX Maier, Charles, 11, 22 Malaya, 244 Malenkov, Georgy, Soviet Premier, 243, 245, 269 Maleter, Pal, 288 Mao Tse-tung, 134, 199, 202 Marshall, Charles Burton, 223–4 Marshall, George, US Secretary of State, 28, 81 – 3, 120 and Cominform, 33, 39 and Czechoslovakia, 51 and Director of Special Studies post, 71 –3, 76– 7 and Italian elections, 53 and military build-up, 192– 3 and OPC, 148, 151, 164 and plausible deniability, 6, 59, 66, 73, 93 – 4 and policy review of State Department, 99 – 100 and Program A, 111– 12, 197 and psychological warfare, responsibilityfor, 39 – 42, 45, 48, 50, 90 and Titoism, 114– 16 see also European Recovery Plan; Marshall Plan Marshall Plan, 11, 27, 33, 42, 47, 49, 108, 123 and OPC, 160, 162 opposition to, 16, 21 – 3, 194, 196 success of, 7, 95, 196, 290 see also European Recovery Plan Masaryk, Jan, Foreign Minister of Czechoslovakia, 162 Matthews, H. Freeman, Director of Office of European Affairs, 24, 182, 233 McCargar, James, 176 McCarthyism, 134, 155, 236 McCloy, John, 111 McDowell, Robert, Colonel, 181 McNarney, Joseph, 88, 164, 317 n.17 Mikoyan, Anastas, 254

355

Molotov, Vyacheslav, Soviet Foreign Minister, 21, 24, 269 Montague, Ludwell Lee, 212 Murphy, Charles, 191 Murphy, David, 184 Murphy, Robert, 111 Mutual Defense Assistance Act, 96 Nagy, Imre, 279– 81, 188 National Committee for a Free Europe (NCFE), 62, 178, 183, 203, 271 national communism, 128, 130– 43, 179, 255, 265– 7, 279– 80, 292 see also Titoism National Military Establishment, 6 National Security Act (1947), 5 – 8, 15, 21, 32 and establishment of CIA, 17, 29 – 30, 44 National Security Council (NSC), 2, 30, 35– 6, 38 – 41, 51, 58, 188 creation of, 7, 31 and Director of Special Studies post, 69 – 74, 76 – 8 and OPC, 98, 102, 158, 207– 10 and PSB, 215, 221, 223 and SSU proposal, 84 – 94 and Titoism, 115, 119 –20, 122 see also National Security Council directives National Security Council directives NSC 1/3: 52 – 3 NSC 4: 41 – 2, 56 – 7, 86 NSC 4-A: 3, 21, 41, 147, 150, 163 administrative conflict concerning, 47 – 50, 57, 64, 66 – 7, 69 – 73, 79 – 80, 82 – 3, 85, 87, 90– 1, 94 adoption of, 42 – 5, 46, 145 approval of, by Truman, 7, 290, 292 as compromise, 17 shift to NSC 10/2, 52 – 4, 59, 91, 94, 225

356

THE CIA

AND THE

NSC 7: 98 – 9, 124 NSC 10: 73 – 4, 77 –80, 82– 4 NSC 10/1: 88 – 90 NSC 10/2: 3, 21, 99, 113, 132, 146– 8, 158, 165, 167, 189– 90, 208, 210, 213, 219, 256–7, 291–2 administrative conflict concerning, 47, 52 – 5, 59, 69, 90 – 4, 99, 146, 88, 225 adoption of, 96, 98, 104, 144, 179, 290 and definition of political warfare, 5 drafting of, 188 oversight provisions, 156, 163 post-NSC 10/2, 148– 53 shift from NSC 4-A, 52 – 4, 59, 91, 94, 225 superseding of, 207 NSC 10/3: 207 NSC 10/4: 207 NSC 10/5: 206, 210– 12, 218, 220, 226, 228, 250, 256, 291 Panel, 213, 221 NSC 18: 115– 16, 120, 122 NSC 18/2: 117, 119 NSC 18/4: 140 NSC 20: 99 – 100, 102– 3, 119, 137 NSC 20/1: 102– 3 NSC 20/2: NSC 20/4: 104– 7, 119– 21, 133, 146– 7, 163, 187, 190, 196, 200, 232, 292 NSC 58: 128– 30 NSC 58/2: 132– 6, 139– 42, 254 NSC 68: 186, 216, 218, 220, 226, 248, 259 impact on strategy and operations, 190– 206, 210, 231– 2, 292 implementation of, 142 and military build-up, 191– 3 NSC 135: 223 NSC 135/1: 227, 231 NSC 135/3: 230– 2

SOVIET BLOC

NSC 141: 231 NSC 143/2: 241 NSC 158: 247, 253 NSC 162/2: 248– 53, 257– 8, 263, 292 NSC 174: 253– 5, 257, 268, 272, 289 NSC 5406/1: 254 NSC 5412: 256– 7 5412 Committee see Special Group NSC 5412/1: 257 NSC 5412/2: 258 NSC 5505/1: 263– 5 NSC 5524/1: 266– 7 NSC 5602/1: 271 NSC 5608: 272 NSC 5608/1: 273 NSC 5811/1: 288 Nazism, 2, 176, 183 Nitze, Paul, Director of PPS, and containment policy, 197– 9, 235 and NSC 68, drafting of, 192– 4 and PSB, 217– 19, 223– 25 Nixon, Richard, US Vice-President (later President), 258, 265, 273 North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) creation of, 7, 96– 7, 155, 194, 197– 8 and military build-up, 192 and Warsaw Pact, 245 nuclear capability, 187 American, 6, 134, 190– 2 Soviet, 6, 133– 4, 171, 198, 202– 3, 236, 255, 261 –2 Office of Policy Coordination (OPC) activation of, 158– 62 Asian division of, 166 autonomy of, 166– 72, 189– 90 budget of, 62, 160– 1, 168–70, 187, 201– 2, 206, 219– 20 bureaucracy, internal, of, 170– 1 and China, 202

INDEX CIA, operation under, 146–52, 156– 7, 168, 189– 90, 202– 12 criticism of strategy of, 228– 30 and Directorate of Plans, 205 documentation of, 13– 14 and economic warfare, 164 establishment of, 97 – 104, 144– 5 and Germany, 159– 60 growth of, 200– 6, 211 and Korean War, 186– 8, 200, 202, 204 launch of operations of, 6, 94, 172– 85 missions, cooperation with, 128–9 and NSC 20/4, 104– 7, 146 and Operation Valuable/BGFIEND, 173– 8, 180 and Operation ZRELOPE, 182– 4 OSO, merger with, 205, 211– 12, 228 political warfare campaign of, 48, 137, 139, 141, 145– 6, 163, 171– 2, 199–200, 291 PPS (State Department), authority over, 57, 146– 57, 159, 163– 5, 167, 189 and PSB, 213– 15, 219– 28 reorganisation of, 188– 90, 205– 12 Soviet bloc, activities in, 10, 147, 194– 5 strategic guidelines for, 74, 145– 6, 161– 7, 188–9, 213, 219– 21, 292– 3 and Titoism, 114– 15, 120– 1, 125, 128– 9 and wartime measures, 164– 5, 172– 3 and WIN, support of, 180– 2, 204 Yugoslavia, operations in, 172– 3, 175, 178– 80 see also Wisner, Frank Office of Special Operations (OSO), 18 – 20, 48, 81, 83 merger with OPC, 205, 211–12, 228

357

Office of Special Projects (OSP), 86 – 94, 97 Office of Strategic Services (OSS), 3, 29, 84, 156–7 and ‘Donovan tradition’, 2, 202 Offie, Carmel, 183, 201 Operation Whirlwind, 281 Operations Coordinating Board (OCB), 240, 250– 6, 264 creation of, 250 and de´tente, 267, 269 and Hungarian Revolution, 282 Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, 182–3 Packet report, 219– 23 Pentagon, 55 – 6, 101, 120, 122, 184, 217 and covert operations in Far East, 202 and Program A, 112 and wartime political warfare, 68, 172, 317 n.17 Perkins, George, Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs, 175 Pforzheimer, Walter, 170 Philby, Kim, 174, 176 Philippines, 294 Planning Coordination Group (PCG), 257–8 plausible deniability, 6, 59, 66, 73, 93– 4, 221 Poland, 126, 172– 3, 266 anti-Soviet resistance in, 19, 137, 252 communist party in, 25 ‘Polish October’, 275– 7, 280, 282, 284, 290 Pozna´n, revolt in, 271– 5 and Radio Free Europe, 62, 203 see also WIN Polgar, Tom, 184 Policy Planning Staff (PPS), 31, 44– 5, 99, 291 and CIA, conflict with, 63 – 94, 146– 52, 188, 214

358

THE CIA

AND THE

and Director of Studies post, 69 – 79 and foreign e´migre´s, 54, 60 –2, 67, 195, 251 and national communism, 135– 42 and OPS, authority over, 57, 146– 57, 159, 163– 5, 167, 189 and OSP proposal, 89 – 94 and Polish October, 276 political warfare proposals of, 47, 50, 55 –9, 67– 73 PPS/22, 60 –1 PPS 22/1, 60 – 1 PPS/33, 101– 2 PPS/35, 114, 122 PPS/37, 109 PPS/38, 101– 2, 105 PPS/59, 123– 7 PPS/60, 129 and Program A, 107– 12 and Soviet bloc policy, review of, 99 –104, 107, 119– 27 and Titoism, 164 and unified European strategy, 19 Polish Freedom and Independence Movement see WIN political warfare, peacetime, 3 – 7 administrative conflict over, 46 – 94 and Cold War, onset of, 18 – 21 and Cominform, 25 criticism of strategy of, 228– 34 definition of, 5 – 11, 93, 163 expansion under NSC 68, 190– 205 functional groups for, 165 inauguration of, conflict over, 46 – 94 and Korean War, 186– 8 and military build-up, 191– 2, 197– 9 and retracting Soviet power, unfeasibility of, 186– 9, 192– 3, 199– 200 and Smith’s magnitude report, 208– 12, 220– 2 summary of, 289– 95 as visible venture, 195

SOVIET BLOC

see also Kennan, George F., Long Telegram of; national communism; National Security Council directives, NSC 4-A, 10/1, 10/2, 10/5, 58/2, 68, 5412, 5412/1; Office of Policy Coordination; Operations Coordinating Board; Program A; Psychological Strategy Board; psychological warfare, peacetime; Titoism Prague see Czechoslovakia President’s Committee on International Information Activities see Jackson Committee Program A, 107– 13, 193, 197, 235, 288, 294 demise of, 122– 3, 127, 154– 5, 199 strategies similar to, 118 Project Solarium, 248– 9 Project TROY, 212, 217 Project UMPIRE, 49 – 50 propaganda see psychological warfare Psychological Strategy Board (PSB), 182, 205, 210, 232, 291 and 10/5 Panel, 213, 221 and Albania, 177 creation of, 212, 217– 18 criticism of, 239– 40 obstruction of, 224– 6 and Office of Evaluation and Review, 222 and Packet report, 219– 23 PSB D-24, 242 replacement of, 250 and Stalin’s death, 242– 5 strategic responsibilities of, 213– 28, 293 psychological warfare, peacetime (propaganda), 96 assignment to CIA, 3, 7, 37 – 45, 46 – 50, 81 – 2 ‘black’ propaganda, 29, 32, 49, 67, 80 and Cominform, 25

INDEX debate about, 55 – 7 expansion under NSC 68, 191 and foreign e´migre´s, 60 – 2, 67, 132, 241 and Hungarian Revolution, 278, 282, 284– 7 initiation of, 8, 16 –21, 25 –34 and Italian elections, 52 – 4 and NSC 58/2, 133– 5 and PPS– CIA conflict, 63 – 9 Psychological Warfare Agency, 32, 36 and SANACC, 30 – 7, 40 and Titoism, 125– 6, 131– 2 and de´tente, 273 see also national communism; National Security Council directives, NSC 4-A, 5412, 5412/1; Office of Special Projects; Psychological Strategy Board; Radio Free Europe; Radio in the American Sector; Radio Liberty; Special Services Unit; Voice of America psychological warfare, wartime, 3, 20, 31 – 3, 55 – 7; see also Office of Strategic Services Pyongyang, 186 Radio Free Europe (RFE), 62 – 3, 203, 251 and ‘Chance for Peace’ speech, 244 and Hungarian Revolution, 278, 282, 284– 5, 287 and Khrushchev’s secret speech, 271 and Poland, 276 Radio in the American Sector (RIAS), 203 Radio Liberty (RL), 62 – 3, 203 Ra´kosi, Ma´tya´s, 277 Reams, Robert Borden, 115– 16 Reston, James, 112 Rockefeller, Nelson A., 257– 8 rollback policy, 2, 4, 19, 104, 132, 252– 3, 255, 257, 265– 6 and Albania, 177

359

and Hungarian Revolution, 286, 294 shift away from, 249– 51, 263, 275, 286, 291– 4 Romania, 24, 172, 266 anti-Soviet resistance in, 20 communist party in, 25 and Radio Free Europe, 62, 203 Soviet takeover of, 157 Roosevelt, Franklin, 2, 236–7 Rositzke, Harry, 18, 28, 63, 176, 180, 183–4 Rostow, Walt, 242 Royall, Kenneth, US Secretary of Army, 42, 77, 83, 90, 93 Saltzman, Charles, 183 Schlesinger, Arthur, Jr, 157 Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), 173–4, 180–1 Senate Foreign Relations Committee, 197 Sienko, Joseph, leader of WIN, 181 Sigurimi, 1, 176– 7 Slansky, Rudolf, 229 Smith, Walter Bedell, Director of CIA, 4, 121–2, 151, 256 magnitude paper of, 208– 12, 220– 2, 239 and PSB, 212– 16, 220– 3, 225, 227 reorganisation of CIA/OPC, 188– 90, 205– 12 as Under Secretary of State, 238 Souers, Sidney, NSC Executive Secretary, 31, 37 – 8, 41, 56, 70 – 2, 122 and OPC, 149– 50 and OSP proposal, 86 – 8, 90 sources on Cold War, 13 –14 Soviet Moldavia, 172 Special Group (5412 Committee), 258–60 Special Policy Committee (SPC), 174 Special Procedures Group (SPG), 80, 83, 88, 96 – 7, 161, 163

360

THE CIA

AND THE

initiation of psychological warfare by, 47 –50 and Italian elections, 53 – 4, 64, 68 and PPS, 57, 59, 64 – 71 and ULTIMATE, 65 – 6 Special Services Unit, 82 – 5 Special Studies and Evaluation (SSE), 32 Stalin, Joseph, Soviet leader and Comintern, 33 death of, 140, 220, 241– 3, 245, 247, 269 denunciation by Khrushchev, 269–72 ‘doctor’s plot’ against, 229 and purges, 125 and Tito, break with, 113, 115– 16, 173, 292 and World War II, 2 and Yalta agreements, 237 Stassen, Harold, 242 State-Army-Navy-Air Force Coordinating Committee (SANACC), 60 – 1 and psychological warfare, 32 – 7, 40, 55 –7 SANACC 304, 80 SANACC 304/10, 36 – 7 SANACC 304/14, 56, 73 State-Defense Policy Review Group, 192– 3 State Department and Albania, 174–5 and CIA, conflict with, 46–7, 49–50, 56–7, 59–60, 64–5, 67–70, 75 and Italian elections, 53, 65 and national communism, 138– 42 and OSP proposal, 90 – 2, 94 and Pozna´n riots, 272 and PSB, 215– 17, 223– 6 and SSU proposal, 84 and Stalin’s death, 243 and Titoism, 117, 121, 140, 179 see also Policy Planning Staff State-War-Navy Coordinating Committee (SWNCC), 20, 31 SWNCC 304/6, 31, 56

SOVIET BLOC

Stevens, Leslie, Admiral, 189, 207– 08, 215 Stilwell, Richard, 166 Stone, Donald, 56 Strategic Services Unit (SSU), 29 Suez crisis, 283, 286 Symington, Stuart, Air Force Secretary, 90, 93 Taft, Robert, 237 Thayer, Charles, 28 Thompson, Llewellyn, Deputy Director of Office of European Affairs, 63– 4 Tito, Josip Broz, President of Yugoslavia, 124 break with Stalin and Cominform, 113– 19, 126– 30, 140, 142, 164, 173, 175, 178, 254, 292 and Khrushchev, relationship with, 274, 280 and OPC operation to overthrow, 179– 80 Soviet recognition of regime of, 265– 6, 269, 272 and World War II, 156, 179 see also Titoism Titoism, 9, 107, 114– 30, 135– 6, 139–40, 142, 164, 173, 175, 178–80, 231, 238, 292 under Eisenhower, 265, 292 Trieste, 109, 177 Truman, Harry S., US President, 4– 6, 81 accession as President, 2 and Clifford– Elsey Report, 18 – 20 and Cominform, 33 and defense spending, 202 and Dewey, defeat of, 236 divisions in administration of, 5, 47, 65, 69, 71, 94, and Eastern Europe, rejection of war in, 133– 5, 143, 187, 193– 5, 199, 223, 231, 236, 293

INDEX and election (1948), 75 and election (1952), 237 and foreign e´migre´s, 61 and German partition, 122 and ISG, 55 and Italian elections, 51 – 3 and Korean War, 4, 187, 204 and military build-up, 192– 3 and National Security Act (1947), 5 –6, 15, 21 and NSC 4-A, 7 and NSC 10/2, 5, 93 – 4 and NSC 20/4, 104 and NSC 58/2, 132– 6 and peacetime psychological warfare, launch of, 27, 30, 40, 62, 65 and plausible deniability, 93 and Program A, 109, 111– 12 and PSB, 177, 182, 212– 13, 217– 18, 223, 239, 293 Soviet bloc, policy towards, 98 – 143, 182, 198– 200, 230– 4, 235– 9, 251, 275, 282, 289, 293– 4 and Titoism, 113– 18, 121, 124, 126– 7, 231, 238, 292 Truman Doctrine, 16, 21 and US ministers to Eastern Europe, 127 and Western Europe, policy in, 10, 21 –2, 26, 51, 95 – 7, 111–13, 145– 6, 155, 162, 193– 5, 290; see also European Recovery Program; Marshall Plan Tufts, Bob, 193 Turkey, 16, 20 Ukraine, 172– 3, 180, 252 Operation ZRELOPE, 182– 4 Ukrainian Insurgent Army, 182 Ulbricht, Walter, 245, 330 n.30 ULTIMATE, 65 – 6, 70 United Nations, 140 and Hungarian Revolution, 280, 282 Security Council, 279

361

Vandenberg, Arthur, Senator, 197 Vandenberg, Hoyt S., Director of CIA, 19, 29 Velona Bay, 174 Vietnam, 294 Villard, Henry, 64 Voice of America (VOA), 27, 128, 131, 137, 141, 203, 215 and ‘Chance for Peace’ speech, 244 and Hungarian Revolution, 287 Volunteer Freedom Corps (VFC), 240–1 Warner, Michael, 200 Warsaw Pact, 276, 280 creation of, 245, 265, 269 Webb, James, Under Secretary of State, 120, 122– 3, 156 and PSB, 212, 217, 224 Whitehurst, Charles, 168 WIN (Polish Freedom and Independence Movement), 180– 2, 204, 229– 30 Winks, Robin, 177 Wisner, Frank, head of OPC, 121, 189, 200, 212, 229, 317 n.17 and Albania, 174, 177 appointment as head of OPC, 157– 62, 165– 6 autonomy of, 167– 71, 190, 293 and Bloodstone, 61 – 2 and budgets of OPC, 201 and Eisenhower, 238 and OCB, 251– 2, 256 and OSO, 206 and Poland, 180– 1 and PSB, 213, 215, 222, 227 as representative on SANACC, 60 and Ukraine, 183 World War II, 2 aftermath of, 5 – 6, 8, 23, 95, 146 Pacific theatre of, 202 Wright, Colonel, 181

362

THE CIA

AND THE

Wright, Edwin, Deputy DCI, 36, 38, 41 Wyman, William, head of OSO, 48 Yalta agreements, 24, 146, 194, 237 Yergin, Daniel, 6, 11 Yugoslavia, 140 Cominform, expulsion from, 113– 15, 134– 6, 141, 292

SOVIET BLOC communist party in, 25, 124 as independent nationalist regime, 265, 272 OPC operations in, 172– 3, 175, 178– 80 and World War II, 156 see also Tito; Titoism

Zog, King of Albania, 1