Chapter 5: Faraway Places
Exotic tongues my unknown brothers speak
Where we in strange lands understanding seek.
Where we in strange lands understanding seek.
NOTE: The text covering material on the Central Intelligence Agency, Pilgrim in the CIA, was cleared for publication by the Publications Review Board of that Agency pursuant to CIA Public Affairs Regulation HR 6-2: Non-official Publications and Oral Presentations by Employees and Former Employees (Revised 7 August 1984). Such clearance for security reasons does not, of course, imply any official Agency endorsement of this manuscript.
PAB
Fall 1986
PAB
Fall 1986
"Travel, in the younger sort," Francis Bacon tells us, "is a part of education; in the elder, a part of experience." And Samuel Johnson found "The use of travelling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are." Generally accepted is the view that travel broadens the mind. And, it might be added, unless done on expense accounts, flattens the purse. But no better investment can be made than to see how others live.
Over the years I was privileged to see many places, under greatly varying circumstances. There was the year spent in Switzerland before entering university. There were the two years spent in the ETO while in naval service during WW II. Two trips around the world while in CIA as a civil servant. And many other visits abroad either for business or pleasure.
It was June 1929, one of the few times I have been the subject of a press report, in this case, the Kansas City Star.
A Speeder's Excuse Wins
Preoccupied With Thoughts of European Trip, Says Paul Borel
Thoughts of a year in Switzerland occupied the mind of Paul Borel, 17 years old, 923 Newton avenue, yesterday, and caution was forgotten. The result was arrest on a charge of speeding. . . .
But when Paul explained at police headquarters that he was hurrying home to pack for a trip to Europe he was released.
Paul will depart this morning with his parents, Mr. and Mrs. Jules A. Borel, for a year of study in Switzerland. He was graduated Wednesday from Northeast high school.
The time was the summer before the crash of '29, and my father was taking his family – his wife, daughter and four sons – to visit relatives and friends in Switzerland.
We packed the Oldsmobile touring car and set off for New York. I, aged 17, was the only driver with license. Neither Father nor Mother drove. My brother Pete, age 15, on occasion spelled me, although he had no license.
Arriving, we cruised the dock area until we found a buyer for the car. We disposed of it for $50.00, as I remember it. The next day we boarded the President's Line S.S. George Washington for the second leg of our great adventure.
In the course of the next two months of travel (to Paris, Geneva, the family lieu in the area of Neuchâtel, and the eastern part of Switzerland, mainly in Zürich, where we had made our home prior to immigration to the U.S.), certain plans began to jell.
Arrangements were made. Pete was to attend the Federal Horological Technicum at La Chaux-de-Fonds, presumably for four years. John was to spend a year at Frutigan, in the Bernese Oberland Alps, for his health. I was to spend a year in Zürich with the family of my godfather, Robert Huelin. The truncated family was to return home.
During my year in Zürich, I saw my brothers but once, for a visit. We all pursued the program planned, little realizing that with each passing month economic developments made it increasingly difficult for my father to meet the family's financial needs, appreciably greater because of our presence abroad.
I too had a program, facilitated by my integration into the Huelin family, which consisted of Oncle Robert and Tante Marie, as I called them, and their children, Rita (15), Robbie (9), Rosemarie (3). I was to study German, using French as the language of instruction. And I would continue, by correspondence, a course in architectural drawing given by the Chicago Technical College.
Tante Marie knew some English, but English was to be no part of our conversation, save to clear hurdles that might arise in German or French.
A typical day would see me rise early, ride my bicycle some six kilometers to the home of my private tutor, Professor Jean Kratzer. We would review the written work assigned the day before and then proceed to formal instruction: vocabulary drill, conversational German, reading, and written work, with care given to grammar. The language of instruction was French. Thus I improved my French in the process of learning German.
These were golden hours. Professor Kratzer was a learned man, fluent in seven languages. He had been on expeditions with Egypt's king. The Professor, a close friend of my father's, was a bachelor, not given to talk much about himself. I learned that he had once been engaged to a woman with whom he was much in love, but had suffered the tragedy of her death through accident. We became very good friends.
On returning to my room, I would spend time on my homework and my drawings. On occasion I would call on professors at the Eidgen Technische Hochshule – the Federal Technical College, Switzerland's MIT. There I would compare notes with them on how differently architectural problems were handled in our respective countries. Having done my studies, I would take Rosemarie for the outing that followed her nap, thus giving her mother a breather. This was small recompense for the devotion and love she and other members of the family shared to make my absence from home more pleasant.
Evenings might bring a walk with Uncle Robert. Often we would end up in the first class section of the cafe at the railroad station and enjoy a glass of hot tea. Thus we cemented a relationship precious to us both.
On Sunday mornings, I attended services at the French Reformed church, sometimes alone, where I heard flawless French spoken by the superbly trained Swiss clergy. Or there might be an excursion with friends or family to Zürichberg, Uetliberg, or, more removed, the Rheinfall. Many befriended me during my stay, none more so than Rene Curchod, with whom I maintained contact throughout my life.
In late May 1930, my brother John and I returned to the U.S. aboard the French Line's De Grasse, having first bid goodbye to brother Pete, Uncle Paul's family in Geneva, and seen a bit of Paris. It was quite an adventure. John was then 15, and I, 18 years of age. I would not see Europe again until January 1944, under very different circumstances.
My return to Europe was in January 1944, and the circumstances were not of choice but of the wartime exigencies of the US Navy, of which I was part. I was in various parts of the ETO from January 1944, to November 1945, and again, from July through October 1946.
The odyssey of those days was kaleidoscopic in its rapid and dramatic changes of weather, scenery, events, assigned duties, colleagues, superiors, languages, moods, and tides of battle. Uncertainty seemed the only constant. As soon as one began to get on top of the current assignment, it was off to something new.
There were arrivals and departures: Bristol channel; London with its V-l bombs; hospitalization at Oxford; Argyle castle in Scotland; the movement to Utah Beach aboard the USS Thomas Johnson; Cherbourg; Normandy; Brittany; Le Havre; London again and its V-2 bombs; to Ostend aboard an LST; Brussels, forays in Holland; London again; Versailles; and in Germany, Hoechst and Berlin.
The flavor of those days is better told in words written at the time, some of which I shared with readers in my publication Letters from WWII, a portion of which was the basis for Letters Home, appearing in the June 1985, issue of the Kansas Alumni magazine.
There remains to say that during this period of my life I made many fast friends with whom I have stayed in contact over the intervening forty years. Among those I must mention: Ross Berkes, Seymour St. John, Allen Morel and, Walter Moberg, Sydney Connor. And among those now gone: Hugh Awtrey, Robert Robbins, William Hallam Tuck, Tracy Kittredge, Cornelius "Bill" Westerbeek, and Admiral Richard Conolly. There are others I would much like to see again but they have been lost in the movements of today's mobile population.
Events and participants all left their mark in the annealing process called growth.
Until retirement from CIA in 1972, my travel abroad was exclusively connected with my responsibilities as a civil servant in that organization. Though never stationed overseas, I nevertheless supervised the execution of certain overseas intelligence programs. These were carried out in some cases by CIA personnel and, in other cases, by the personnel of other departments committed to performing certain tasks on behalf of CIA, or an intelligence community program for which we had assumed direction.
CIA employees traveling abroad usually do so under "cover." It is a practice aimed at avoiding possible embarrassment either to the U.S. Government or to the government of the host country. As an official in the overt (non- clandestine) side of the house, I travelled under "light cover."
In early September 1955, when I was on the Board of National Estimates, I accompanied CIA deputy director General Peare Cabell, USAF, on a field trip to Africa. A handful of others were also in the party, including the head of the State Department's intelligence bureau and members of the armed forces.
Africa was becoming an area of increasing importance to our Government, with forces at work in the area portending change. It was clear we would increasingly have to analyze developments in individual countries as they emerged from colonial status. Regional analyses would no longer suffice as a basis for policy.
It was a fascinating trip. On October 17, we flew to Germany, where we picked up a Military Air Transport C-118. Lots of room. I returned to the U.S. on November 23, after 21 take-offs and landings, covering 16,000 miles in Africa. Our flight, via Madrid, followed the periphery of the African continent, down the west coast to Capetown, then up the east coast to Cairo and Tripoli.
At most stops, we would meet with U.S. Government officials, officials of the country visited, and private citizens who could shed light upon what was happening, why, and the outlook for the future.
With the benefit of hindsight, it is interesting to think on how wrong the local people were, and we as well, to the extent that we were influenced by their views. Not so much wrong about what was happening, but wrong about how soon nationalist movements would bring about drastic change. Events were to move much more rapidly, gaining as they developed unanticipated momentum.
It is often the less consequential things that one remembers most easily. We seemed always to be "reworking our gear." For we had multiple clothing requirements. On approaching our particular destination, we would contact the local reception committee, usually the U.S. ambassador or base commanding general, to ascertain how we should dress and what the weather was like.
There were amusing episodes as, for example, when in Monrovia, a comic-opera country where government officials wore silk top hats while walking along mud streets. Here we were guests for cocktails of President William Vaccanarat Shadrach Tubman. Seeing naval uniforms among us, he lifted his glass, obviously searching for the familiar toast among naval circles, "Let us splice the main brace." Having searched in vain, he finally blurted out, "Let's brace the main tops'il." Which we did.
On another occasion, owing to faulty communication, General Cabell had been assigned quarters vastly inferior to those provided for my use, resulting in a rapid redeployment of involved baggage once the error was discovered.
The sight of Salvation Army activity on the outskirts of Leopoldville in the Belgian Congo warmed my heart.
Having made stops in Tangier, Rabat, Dakar, Monrovia, Accra, Lagos, Leopoldville, we headed for Pretoria and Capetown. There the lush beauty of jacaranda contrasted with the sight of mute white ladies in black sashes forming a gauntlet in protest of apartheid which we had to run. And there local officials would seek to justify a policy understandable in historical terms but doomed by history's movement against it.
Outside Capetown we took the cable car to Table Mountain. Standing at the point of the Cape of Good Hope, the Indian and Atlantic oceans could be seen meeting, the opposing currents roiling the waters and forming an unmistakable line of demarcation between them, as though the incompatible cultures of Asia and Africa were on collision course.
From South Africa, we made our way to Lourenco Marques, Salisbury, Nairobi, Khartoum, Cairo, Tripoli and Algiers, en route having stopped at Livingston, Northern Rhodesia, to see an unforgettable sight from another world: Victoria Falls by moonlight.
By returning home I was yet to make calls in Frankfurt, Heidelberg, Paris, Geneva (where a Foreign Ministers Conference was in session) and, before visiting our British intelligence cousins in London, take a couple of days leave to renew acquaintances with personal friends in Switzerland.
I was to take a number of other trips of some duration but none matched the marathon from 21 September to 22 December 1958, which took me round the world.
Trips like these are expensive in time and money. They are hard on the individual if undertaken for serious purpose. Hence, they usually are in pursuit of several objectives. With the manifold responsibilities of CIA and our Government abroad, there is no lack of identifying useful ways to supplement the accomplishment of the main objective giving rise to a trip abroad.
In the particular case, as CIA's assistant director in charge of central reference services, I was to be part of the U.S. delegation to the Melbourne Conference on intelligence research methods held by the US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, and to present a paper, "On Processing Intelligence Information." The conference was the first of its kind. Two more were to be held, in 1962 in Washington, and in 1966, in London. At each of those conferences, I participated; in Washington, by introducing our demonstration of machine translation, and in London, where I read a paper: "Controlling Intelligence Information."
An important secondary objective of the trip, and one which added much to the time spent away from Washington, was to touch base with American Embassies and Consulates General on whom we depended for information collected in the normal conduct of their business representing US interests. And we also visited and exchanged views with the services of friendly governments. These and other aims are easily stated, but involve much detailed exploration, the making of commitments, and follow-up direction on return. We live in an incredibly complex world wherein interdependence is beyond belief.
I cannot get into the specifics, which would require more words than the reader would wish to tackle. Looking at some notes I came across, I can pretty well reconstruct the final paragraph of my report to Mr. Allen Dulles, then director of central intelligence:
"To travel abroad is always rewarding experience. This trip has been no exception. I travelled East around the world in 93 days, during which I visited 21 foreign countries; was airborne for almost one week and covered in excess of 36,000 miles. Ninety-three days is a long time to live out of a suitcase (two to be more precise). In terms of history it is a very short time, though much happens in three months in the world of today. We were even more conscious of the current pace of history because we were closer to the events themselves. In Paris we witnessed the birth of the Fifth Republic; in Athens we shared Makarios' impatience with the hotel elevator; in Cairo we listened to Egyptians speaking cautiously for fear of Nasir; in Karachi as in Rangoon, Bangkok, and Djakarta, we felt the breath of martial law or the tightening grip of the military in ascendency. . . . We also sailed the bunder boat, and saw the moonlit Taj Majal, the view at Tagaytay, the shrines of Nikko, the 38th parallel and the beach at Waikiki. . . . People still provide the most interesting episodes. The term 'One World' has new meaning after such a trip, meaning given by the guide at the Acropolis, the Navy driver at Bahrain, the innkeeper in Japan, the restauranteur in Hong Kong, or Thai school girls, dressed in bright blue, waiting for the school boat. . . . We even got a lesson in social ethics. As we were looking at pagodas in Rangoon, I asked our guide, a Karen, the meaning of an inscription. He explained that it was like one of our commandments, and he put it this way: 'Do not make trouble for the women – except for your wife'. . . . According to Clifton Fadiman, 'For most men life is a search for the proper manila folder in which to get themselves filed.' In closing, I simply note the present short supply of manila folders throughout Asia."
Over the years there were a number of other trips, at home and abroad. One quite unusual one was in November 1959, when six CIA officials were guests of Canada's Department of National Defence. This was termed an "arctic familiarization visit," and we were indeed issued "arctic kits." Our ultimate destination was to have been the establishment at Frobisher on the Arctic Circle north of Hudson Bay, and on to Thule, Greenland. In the event, storms forced us to abort both stops. We got to Churchill on Hudson Bay and no further. Still the six-day visit covered interesting briefings in Ottawa, stops along the DEW line (defense early warning of attack), observations of arctic maneuvers, research in desalinization. Between briefings we scurried underground through a series of tunnels connecting the buildings within which work was done safe from the 50°F below zero weather, and saw the wonders of the northern lights and Eskimo life.
Ten years later, I again went round the world. I was then director of the Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS) which, with its dozen overseas intercept stations, gave our Government global coverage of radio broadcasts. Our bureaus were often a part of either embassy staffs or defense installations. With some FBIS employees so deployed, the greatest portion of them foreign nationals hired because of their skills as linguists, who rarely came to the U.S., it was important to keep in touch in order to make the right management decisions. Therefore, either my deputy or I would try to visit each bureau annually.
Between 7 November and 8 December 1965,1 went, in turn, to London, Kaduna (Nigeria), Bangkok, Saigon, Hong Kong, Taipei, Okinawa, Tokyo, Hokkaido, and Honolulu, then back to Washington. I was thus able to meet our people, the U.S. staff, Third Country nationals, and local employees responsible for monitoring, selecting, preparing and transmitting information to headquarters; to acquaint myself with the physical facilities used to accomplish this; to discuss with local consumers of our products the extent and quality of FBIS services; and, importantly, to reinforce the position of our bureaus with key officials (U.S. diplomatic, consular, military, and host government) in an era of increasing uncertainty for all U.S. installations abroad.
Civil wars, as in the case of the Nigerian-Biafran struggle between 1969-70, political outlooks, as in the case of Okinawa's prospective reversion to Japan, conducting business in war-torn Vietnam, were but a sample of forces affecting our ability to continue our assigned mission.
The fatigue of staying on the road like this for extended time, with change of weather, time zone, food, and the constant need to appear at the next stop as though it were the only one on my itinerary, was not infrequently relieved by unanticipated events, warm camaraderie, and pride in seeing so few do so much, and doing it so well.
I recently ran into the wife of a former colleague. We had a good laugh as we recalled my visit to Bangkok. The local bureau gave a party of welcome for me. I showed up with dress shirt, tie and jacket. Male guests were all in Thai silk shirts. The next day I hurried to shop for a Thai silk shirt, showing up in it at another party that night. You guessed it, those present, following the lead of the boss the night before, had on coat and tie!
There is little point in pursuing further this recitation of time spent abroad, useful, if at all, only in giving some flavor of manifold activities in which I engaged even though I was largely desk-bound in Washington. The FBIS assignment did take me abroad again the fall of 1970 (October 2-22). My objective was similar to that outlined above in the case of the trip to the Far East, involving our bureaus in London, Vienna, Athens, Kyrenia (Cyprus), and a stop in Switzerland en route home. Among my hotel bills covering that trip, I find an invitation to a party U.S. Ambassador Popper kindly sent me while I was in Cyprus. I remember it well because among the guests that evening were some in the cast of a movie company on location. Thus I met Hollywood's Raquel Welch, then reigning goddess of love and recall as well a visit to the castle Richard the Lionheart had built for his queen, Berengaria, long ago in the days of the crusades. Today the castle ruins serve to filter what must be some of the most spectacular sunsets of God's creation. I am brought to grim reality when I think on how the Dome Hotel in Kyrenia, where I stayed, was later brought to ruin in the civil strife in that unhappy land.
An earlier episode comes to mind. During the intelligence conference of 1962 in Washington, I had, as part of the task of discharging our obligations as host, arranged to get the yacht of the Secretary of the Navy. In it we cruised at dusk to Mount Vernon, where, it having been especially kept open for the occasion, we toured, then returned for a moonlight dinner on the yacht. At the next conference four years later, in London, our host was the director general of British intelligence, General Sir Kenneth Strong, who had been Eisenhower's G-2 during WW II. He took a leaf out of our book. As one of the social functions, the delegates and their wives sailed up the Thames in a splendid vessel to Greenwich. There we were dinner guests of the Royal Naval College in a castle which had been built by Elizabeth I. My wife Miriam and I, she at our expense, of course, then visited Vienna, Frankfurt and Cologne, where I had official business. Then on to Switzerland for a few days annual leave before returning home.
No matter where I have been, or what I have done abroad, the best day of any trip has been the return home!
Presidents of the United States on Intelligence
"I thank you for the trouble you have taken in forwarding the intelligence which was inclosed in your Letter of the 11th of March. It is by comparing a variety of information, we are frequently enabled to investigate facts, which were so intricate or hidden, that no single clue could have led to the knowledge of them in this point of view, intelligence becomes interesting which but from its connection and collateral circumstances, would not be important."
Letter from General Washington to James Lovell, 1 April 1782.
"Apropos of your memorandum of November 18, 1944, relative to the establishment of a central intelligence service, I should appreciate your calling together the chiefs of the foreign intelligence and internal security units in the various executive agencies, so that a consensus of opinion can be secured."
Memorandum from President Roosevelt to the Director of OSS, Major General William J. Donovan, 5 April 1945. Written just a week before the President's death, it authorizes Donovan to continue planning for a post-war centralized intelligence service.
"When I became President – if you don't mind me reminiscing a little bit – there was no concentration of information for the benefit of the President. Each department and each organization had its own information service, and that information service was walled off from every other service in such a manner that whenever it was necessary for the President to have information, he had to send to two or three departments to get it, and then he would have to have somebody do a little digging to get it. . . . "
". . . And finally one morning I had a conversation with Admiral Leahy, and suggested to him that there should be a Central Intelligence Agency, for the benefit of the whole Government as well as for the benefit of the President, so he could be informed.”
Remarks of President Truman to a CIA Orientation Training Course, 21 November 1952.
"It is not always easy. Your successes are unheralded – your failures are trumpeted. I sometimes have that feeling myself. But I am sure you realize how important is your work, how essential it is – and how, in the long sweep of history, how significant your efforts will be judged."
Remarks of President Kennedy at the CIA Headquarters, 28 November 1961, upon presenting the National Security Medal to the retiring Director of Central Intelligence, Allen Dulles.
“In 2½ years of working with these men I have yet to meet a ‘007.’ I have met dozens of men who are moved and motivated by the highest and most patriotic and dedicated purposes – men who are specialists in economics, and political science, and history, and geography, and physics, and many other fields where logic and analysis are crucial to the decision that the President of their country is called upon to make.
Remarks of President Johnson, 30 June 1966, at the swearing in ceremony of Mr. Helms as Director of Central Intelligence.
“It has been truly said that the CIA is a professional organization. This is one of the reasons that when the new Administration came in and many changes were made, as they should be made in our American political system after an election, and a change of Parties, as far as the Executive Branch is concerned, I did not make a change.”
Remarks of President Nixon at the Central Intelligence Agency, 7 March 1969.
“As every President since World War II, I depend on you as one of America’s first lines of defense. Every morning, as a result of your efforts, an intelligence report is delivered to my desk which is complete, concise, perceptive, and responsible.”
Excerpt from President Ford's remarks at swearing in of George Bush as Director of Central Intelligence, 30 January 1976.
"Whether you work in Langley or afar away nation, whether your tasks are in operations or analysis sections, it is upon your intellect and integrity, your wit and intuition, that the fate of freedom rests for millions of your countrymen and for many millions more all around the globe."
Excerpts from remarks of President Reagan at CIA Headquarters, 23 June 1982.
Over the years I was privileged to see many places, under greatly varying circumstances. There was the year spent in Switzerland before entering university. There were the two years spent in the ETO while in naval service during WW II. Two trips around the world while in CIA as a civil servant. And many other visits abroad either for business or pleasure.
It was June 1929, one of the few times I have been the subject of a press report, in this case, the Kansas City Star.
A Speeder's Excuse Wins
Preoccupied With Thoughts of European Trip, Says Paul Borel
Thoughts of a year in Switzerland occupied the mind of Paul Borel, 17 years old, 923 Newton avenue, yesterday, and caution was forgotten. The result was arrest on a charge of speeding. . . .
But when Paul explained at police headquarters that he was hurrying home to pack for a trip to Europe he was released.
Paul will depart this morning with his parents, Mr. and Mrs. Jules A. Borel, for a year of study in Switzerland. He was graduated Wednesday from Northeast high school.
The time was the summer before the crash of '29, and my father was taking his family – his wife, daughter and four sons – to visit relatives and friends in Switzerland.
We packed the Oldsmobile touring car and set off for New York. I, aged 17, was the only driver with license. Neither Father nor Mother drove. My brother Pete, age 15, on occasion spelled me, although he had no license.
Arriving, we cruised the dock area until we found a buyer for the car. We disposed of it for $50.00, as I remember it. The next day we boarded the President's Line S.S. George Washington for the second leg of our great adventure.
In the course of the next two months of travel (to Paris, Geneva, the family lieu in the area of Neuchâtel, and the eastern part of Switzerland, mainly in Zürich, where we had made our home prior to immigration to the U.S.), certain plans began to jell.
Arrangements were made. Pete was to attend the Federal Horological Technicum at La Chaux-de-Fonds, presumably for four years. John was to spend a year at Frutigan, in the Bernese Oberland Alps, for his health. I was to spend a year in Zürich with the family of my godfather, Robert Huelin. The truncated family was to return home.
During my year in Zürich, I saw my brothers but once, for a visit. We all pursued the program planned, little realizing that with each passing month economic developments made it increasingly difficult for my father to meet the family's financial needs, appreciably greater because of our presence abroad.
I too had a program, facilitated by my integration into the Huelin family, which consisted of Oncle Robert and Tante Marie, as I called them, and their children, Rita (15), Robbie (9), Rosemarie (3). I was to study German, using French as the language of instruction. And I would continue, by correspondence, a course in architectural drawing given by the Chicago Technical College.
Tante Marie knew some English, but English was to be no part of our conversation, save to clear hurdles that might arise in German or French.
A typical day would see me rise early, ride my bicycle some six kilometers to the home of my private tutor, Professor Jean Kratzer. We would review the written work assigned the day before and then proceed to formal instruction: vocabulary drill, conversational German, reading, and written work, with care given to grammar. The language of instruction was French. Thus I improved my French in the process of learning German.
These were golden hours. Professor Kratzer was a learned man, fluent in seven languages. He had been on expeditions with Egypt's king. The Professor, a close friend of my father's, was a bachelor, not given to talk much about himself. I learned that he had once been engaged to a woman with whom he was much in love, but had suffered the tragedy of her death through accident. We became very good friends.
On returning to my room, I would spend time on my homework and my drawings. On occasion I would call on professors at the Eidgen Technische Hochshule – the Federal Technical College, Switzerland's MIT. There I would compare notes with them on how differently architectural problems were handled in our respective countries. Having done my studies, I would take Rosemarie for the outing that followed her nap, thus giving her mother a breather. This was small recompense for the devotion and love she and other members of the family shared to make my absence from home more pleasant.
Evenings might bring a walk with Uncle Robert. Often we would end up in the first class section of the cafe at the railroad station and enjoy a glass of hot tea. Thus we cemented a relationship precious to us both.
On Sunday mornings, I attended services at the French Reformed church, sometimes alone, where I heard flawless French spoken by the superbly trained Swiss clergy. Or there might be an excursion with friends or family to Zürichberg, Uetliberg, or, more removed, the Rheinfall. Many befriended me during my stay, none more so than Rene Curchod, with whom I maintained contact throughout my life.
In late May 1930, my brother John and I returned to the U.S. aboard the French Line's De Grasse, having first bid goodbye to brother Pete, Uncle Paul's family in Geneva, and seen a bit of Paris. It was quite an adventure. John was then 15, and I, 18 years of age. I would not see Europe again until January 1944, under very different circumstances.
My return to Europe was in January 1944, and the circumstances were not of choice but of the wartime exigencies of the US Navy, of which I was part. I was in various parts of the ETO from January 1944, to November 1945, and again, from July through October 1946.
The odyssey of those days was kaleidoscopic in its rapid and dramatic changes of weather, scenery, events, assigned duties, colleagues, superiors, languages, moods, and tides of battle. Uncertainty seemed the only constant. As soon as one began to get on top of the current assignment, it was off to something new.
There were arrivals and departures: Bristol channel; London with its V-l bombs; hospitalization at Oxford; Argyle castle in Scotland; the movement to Utah Beach aboard the USS Thomas Johnson; Cherbourg; Normandy; Brittany; Le Havre; London again and its V-2 bombs; to Ostend aboard an LST; Brussels, forays in Holland; London again; Versailles; and in Germany, Hoechst and Berlin.
The flavor of those days is better told in words written at the time, some of which I shared with readers in my publication Letters from WWII, a portion of which was the basis for Letters Home, appearing in the June 1985, issue of the Kansas Alumni magazine.
There remains to say that during this period of my life I made many fast friends with whom I have stayed in contact over the intervening forty years. Among those I must mention: Ross Berkes, Seymour St. John, Allen Morel and, Walter Moberg, Sydney Connor. And among those now gone: Hugh Awtrey, Robert Robbins, William Hallam Tuck, Tracy Kittredge, Cornelius "Bill" Westerbeek, and Admiral Richard Conolly. There are others I would much like to see again but they have been lost in the movements of today's mobile population.
Events and participants all left their mark in the annealing process called growth.
Until retirement from CIA in 1972, my travel abroad was exclusively connected with my responsibilities as a civil servant in that organization. Though never stationed overseas, I nevertheless supervised the execution of certain overseas intelligence programs. These were carried out in some cases by CIA personnel and, in other cases, by the personnel of other departments committed to performing certain tasks on behalf of CIA, or an intelligence community program for which we had assumed direction.
CIA employees traveling abroad usually do so under "cover." It is a practice aimed at avoiding possible embarrassment either to the U.S. Government or to the government of the host country. As an official in the overt (non- clandestine) side of the house, I travelled under "light cover."
In early September 1955, when I was on the Board of National Estimates, I accompanied CIA deputy director General Peare Cabell, USAF, on a field trip to Africa. A handful of others were also in the party, including the head of the State Department's intelligence bureau and members of the armed forces.
Africa was becoming an area of increasing importance to our Government, with forces at work in the area portending change. It was clear we would increasingly have to analyze developments in individual countries as they emerged from colonial status. Regional analyses would no longer suffice as a basis for policy.
It was a fascinating trip. On October 17, we flew to Germany, where we picked up a Military Air Transport C-118. Lots of room. I returned to the U.S. on November 23, after 21 take-offs and landings, covering 16,000 miles in Africa. Our flight, via Madrid, followed the periphery of the African continent, down the west coast to Capetown, then up the east coast to Cairo and Tripoli.
At most stops, we would meet with U.S. Government officials, officials of the country visited, and private citizens who could shed light upon what was happening, why, and the outlook for the future.
With the benefit of hindsight, it is interesting to think on how wrong the local people were, and we as well, to the extent that we were influenced by their views. Not so much wrong about what was happening, but wrong about how soon nationalist movements would bring about drastic change. Events were to move much more rapidly, gaining as they developed unanticipated momentum.
It is often the less consequential things that one remembers most easily. We seemed always to be "reworking our gear." For we had multiple clothing requirements. On approaching our particular destination, we would contact the local reception committee, usually the U.S. ambassador or base commanding general, to ascertain how we should dress and what the weather was like.
There were amusing episodes as, for example, when in Monrovia, a comic-opera country where government officials wore silk top hats while walking along mud streets. Here we were guests for cocktails of President William Vaccanarat Shadrach Tubman. Seeing naval uniforms among us, he lifted his glass, obviously searching for the familiar toast among naval circles, "Let us splice the main brace." Having searched in vain, he finally blurted out, "Let's brace the main tops'il." Which we did.
On another occasion, owing to faulty communication, General Cabell had been assigned quarters vastly inferior to those provided for my use, resulting in a rapid redeployment of involved baggage once the error was discovered.
The sight of Salvation Army activity on the outskirts of Leopoldville in the Belgian Congo warmed my heart.
Having made stops in Tangier, Rabat, Dakar, Monrovia, Accra, Lagos, Leopoldville, we headed for Pretoria and Capetown. There the lush beauty of jacaranda contrasted with the sight of mute white ladies in black sashes forming a gauntlet in protest of apartheid which we had to run. And there local officials would seek to justify a policy understandable in historical terms but doomed by history's movement against it.
Outside Capetown we took the cable car to Table Mountain. Standing at the point of the Cape of Good Hope, the Indian and Atlantic oceans could be seen meeting, the opposing currents roiling the waters and forming an unmistakable line of demarcation between them, as though the incompatible cultures of Asia and Africa were on collision course.
From South Africa, we made our way to Lourenco Marques, Salisbury, Nairobi, Khartoum, Cairo, Tripoli and Algiers, en route having stopped at Livingston, Northern Rhodesia, to see an unforgettable sight from another world: Victoria Falls by moonlight.
By returning home I was yet to make calls in Frankfurt, Heidelberg, Paris, Geneva (where a Foreign Ministers Conference was in session) and, before visiting our British intelligence cousins in London, take a couple of days leave to renew acquaintances with personal friends in Switzerland.
I was to take a number of other trips of some duration but none matched the marathon from 21 September to 22 December 1958, which took me round the world.
Trips like these are expensive in time and money. They are hard on the individual if undertaken for serious purpose. Hence, they usually are in pursuit of several objectives. With the manifold responsibilities of CIA and our Government abroad, there is no lack of identifying useful ways to supplement the accomplishment of the main objective giving rise to a trip abroad.
In the particular case, as CIA's assistant director in charge of central reference services, I was to be part of the U.S. delegation to the Melbourne Conference on intelligence research methods held by the US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, and to present a paper, "On Processing Intelligence Information." The conference was the first of its kind. Two more were to be held, in 1962 in Washington, and in 1966, in London. At each of those conferences, I participated; in Washington, by introducing our demonstration of machine translation, and in London, where I read a paper: "Controlling Intelligence Information."
An important secondary objective of the trip, and one which added much to the time spent away from Washington, was to touch base with American Embassies and Consulates General on whom we depended for information collected in the normal conduct of their business representing US interests. And we also visited and exchanged views with the services of friendly governments. These and other aims are easily stated, but involve much detailed exploration, the making of commitments, and follow-up direction on return. We live in an incredibly complex world wherein interdependence is beyond belief.
I cannot get into the specifics, which would require more words than the reader would wish to tackle. Looking at some notes I came across, I can pretty well reconstruct the final paragraph of my report to Mr. Allen Dulles, then director of central intelligence:
"To travel abroad is always rewarding experience. This trip has been no exception. I travelled East around the world in 93 days, during which I visited 21 foreign countries; was airborne for almost one week and covered in excess of 36,000 miles. Ninety-three days is a long time to live out of a suitcase (two to be more precise). In terms of history it is a very short time, though much happens in three months in the world of today. We were even more conscious of the current pace of history because we were closer to the events themselves. In Paris we witnessed the birth of the Fifth Republic; in Athens we shared Makarios' impatience with the hotel elevator; in Cairo we listened to Egyptians speaking cautiously for fear of Nasir; in Karachi as in Rangoon, Bangkok, and Djakarta, we felt the breath of martial law or the tightening grip of the military in ascendency. . . . We also sailed the bunder boat, and saw the moonlit Taj Majal, the view at Tagaytay, the shrines of Nikko, the 38th parallel and the beach at Waikiki. . . . People still provide the most interesting episodes. The term 'One World' has new meaning after such a trip, meaning given by the guide at the Acropolis, the Navy driver at Bahrain, the innkeeper in Japan, the restauranteur in Hong Kong, or Thai school girls, dressed in bright blue, waiting for the school boat. . . . We even got a lesson in social ethics. As we were looking at pagodas in Rangoon, I asked our guide, a Karen, the meaning of an inscription. He explained that it was like one of our commandments, and he put it this way: 'Do not make trouble for the women – except for your wife'. . . . According to Clifton Fadiman, 'For most men life is a search for the proper manila folder in which to get themselves filed.' In closing, I simply note the present short supply of manila folders throughout Asia."
Over the years there were a number of other trips, at home and abroad. One quite unusual one was in November 1959, when six CIA officials were guests of Canada's Department of National Defence. This was termed an "arctic familiarization visit," and we were indeed issued "arctic kits." Our ultimate destination was to have been the establishment at Frobisher on the Arctic Circle north of Hudson Bay, and on to Thule, Greenland. In the event, storms forced us to abort both stops. We got to Churchill on Hudson Bay and no further. Still the six-day visit covered interesting briefings in Ottawa, stops along the DEW line (defense early warning of attack), observations of arctic maneuvers, research in desalinization. Between briefings we scurried underground through a series of tunnels connecting the buildings within which work was done safe from the 50°F below zero weather, and saw the wonders of the northern lights and Eskimo life.
Ten years later, I again went round the world. I was then director of the Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS) which, with its dozen overseas intercept stations, gave our Government global coverage of radio broadcasts. Our bureaus were often a part of either embassy staffs or defense installations. With some FBIS employees so deployed, the greatest portion of them foreign nationals hired because of their skills as linguists, who rarely came to the U.S., it was important to keep in touch in order to make the right management decisions. Therefore, either my deputy or I would try to visit each bureau annually.
Between 7 November and 8 December 1965,1 went, in turn, to London, Kaduna (Nigeria), Bangkok, Saigon, Hong Kong, Taipei, Okinawa, Tokyo, Hokkaido, and Honolulu, then back to Washington. I was thus able to meet our people, the U.S. staff, Third Country nationals, and local employees responsible for monitoring, selecting, preparing and transmitting information to headquarters; to acquaint myself with the physical facilities used to accomplish this; to discuss with local consumers of our products the extent and quality of FBIS services; and, importantly, to reinforce the position of our bureaus with key officials (U.S. diplomatic, consular, military, and host government) in an era of increasing uncertainty for all U.S. installations abroad.
Civil wars, as in the case of the Nigerian-Biafran struggle between 1969-70, political outlooks, as in the case of Okinawa's prospective reversion to Japan, conducting business in war-torn Vietnam, were but a sample of forces affecting our ability to continue our assigned mission.
The fatigue of staying on the road like this for extended time, with change of weather, time zone, food, and the constant need to appear at the next stop as though it were the only one on my itinerary, was not infrequently relieved by unanticipated events, warm camaraderie, and pride in seeing so few do so much, and doing it so well.
I recently ran into the wife of a former colleague. We had a good laugh as we recalled my visit to Bangkok. The local bureau gave a party of welcome for me. I showed up with dress shirt, tie and jacket. Male guests were all in Thai silk shirts. The next day I hurried to shop for a Thai silk shirt, showing up in it at another party that night. You guessed it, those present, following the lead of the boss the night before, had on coat and tie!
There is little point in pursuing further this recitation of time spent abroad, useful, if at all, only in giving some flavor of manifold activities in which I engaged even though I was largely desk-bound in Washington. The FBIS assignment did take me abroad again the fall of 1970 (October 2-22). My objective was similar to that outlined above in the case of the trip to the Far East, involving our bureaus in London, Vienna, Athens, Kyrenia (Cyprus), and a stop in Switzerland en route home. Among my hotel bills covering that trip, I find an invitation to a party U.S. Ambassador Popper kindly sent me while I was in Cyprus. I remember it well because among the guests that evening were some in the cast of a movie company on location. Thus I met Hollywood's Raquel Welch, then reigning goddess of love and recall as well a visit to the castle Richard the Lionheart had built for his queen, Berengaria, long ago in the days of the crusades. Today the castle ruins serve to filter what must be some of the most spectacular sunsets of God's creation. I am brought to grim reality when I think on how the Dome Hotel in Kyrenia, where I stayed, was later brought to ruin in the civil strife in that unhappy land.
An earlier episode comes to mind. During the intelligence conference of 1962 in Washington, I had, as part of the task of discharging our obligations as host, arranged to get the yacht of the Secretary of the Navy. In it we cruised at dusk to Mount Vernon, where, it having been especially kept open for the occasion, we toured, then returned for a moonlight dinner on the yacht. At the next conference four years later, in London, our host was the director general of British intelligence, General Sir Kenneth Strong, who had been Eisenhower's G-2 during WW II. He took a leaf out of our book. As one of the social functions, the delegates and their wives sailed up the Thames in a splendid vessel to Greenwich. There we were dinner guests of the Royal Naval College in a castle which had been built by Elizabeth I. My wife Miriam and I, she at our expense, of course, then visited Vienna, Frankfurt and Cologne, where I had official business. Then on to Switzerland for a few days annual leave before returning home.
No matter where I have been, or what I have done abroad, the best day of any trip has been the return home!
Presidents of the United States on Intelligence
"I thank you for the trouble you have taken in forwarding the intelligence which was inclosed in your Letter of the 11th of March. It is by comparing a variety of information, we are frequently enabled to investigate facts, which were so intricate or hidden, that no single clue could have led to the knowledge of them in this point of view, intelligence becomes interesting which but from its connection and collateral circumstances, would not be important."
Letter from General Washington to James Lovell, 1 April 1782.
"Apropos of your memorandum of November 18, 1944, relative to the establishment of a central intelligence service, I should appreciate your calling together the chiefs of the foreign intelligence and internal security units in the various executive agencies, so that a consensus of opinion can be secured."
Memorandum from President Roosevelt to the Director of OSS, Major General William J. Donovan, 5 April 1945. Written just a week before the President's death, it authorizes Donovan to continue planning for a post-war centralized intelligence service.
"When I became President – if you don't mind me reminiscing a little bit – there was no concentration of information for the benefit of the President. Each department and each organization had its own information service, and that information service was walled off from every other service in such a manner that whenever it was necessary for the President to have information, he had to send to two or three departments to get it, and then he would have to have somebody do a little digging to get it. . . . "
". . . And finally one morning I had a conversation with Admiral Leahy, and suggested to him that there should be a Central Intelligence Agency, for the benefit of the whole Government as well as for the benefit of the President, so he could be informed.”
Remarks of President Truman to a CIA Orientation Training Course, 21 November 1952.
"It is not always easy. Your successes are unheralded – your failures are trumpeted. I sometimes have that feeling myself. But I am sure you realize how important is your work, how essential it is – and how, in the long sweep of history, how significant your efforts will be judged."
Remarks of President Kennedy at the CIA Headquarters, 28 November 1961, upon presenting the National Security Medal to the retiring Director of Central Intelligence, Allen Dulles.
“In 2½ years of working with these men I have yet to meet a ‘007.’ I have met dozens of men who are moved and motivated by the highest and most patriotic and dedicated purposes – men who are specialists in economics, and political science, and history, and geography, and physics, and many other fields where logic and analysis are crucial to the decision that the President of their country is called upon to make.
Remarks of President Johnson, 30 June 1966, at the swearing in ceremony of Mr. Helms as Director of Central Intelligence.
“It has been truly said that the CIA is a professional organization. This is one of the reasons that when the new Administration came in and many changes were made, as they should be made in our American political system after an election, and a change of Parties, as far as the Executive Branch is concerned, I did not make a change.”
Remarks of President Nixon at the Central Intelligence Agency, 7 March 1969.
“As every President since World War II, I depend on you as one of America’s first lines of defense. Every morning, as a result of your efforts, an intelligence report is delivered to my desk which is complete, concise, perceptive, and responsible.”
Excerpt from President Ford's remarks at swearing in of George Bush as Director of Central Intelligence, 30 January 1976.
"Whether you work in Langley or afar away nation, whether your tasks are in operations or analysis sections, it is upon your intellect and integrity, your wit and intuition, that the fate of freedom rests for millions of your countrymen and for many millions more all around the globe."
Excerpts from remarks of President Reagan at CIA Headquarters, 23 June 1982.
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