Francesco/who-killed-jfk huggingface dataset:
[104-10324-10002.pdf — page 41]
SECRETthe Ops Center and he had one machine up in his Ops Center in the White House, and at first we were standing at the machines separately waiting for the piece of paper (nobody else was allowed to see the paper). So, you know, we worked together as a team. And the Agency, I mean at least the Clandestine Service side of it worked very closely with them. And I remember right after Nixon was sworn in in January of '69.INTERVIEWER: '69 when he came in?MR. HALPERN: Yeah, he came in in '69. There was a meeting -- Nixon, Mitchell, Kissinger, Helms, and Tom Karamessines in the White House.INTERVIEWER: Was Rogers there?MR. HALPERN: No.INTERVIEWER: No, Rogers?MR. HALPERN: You mean the Secretary of State? No. Who is he? He didn't count. You know that. I mean the history books are full of that now. No, Mitchell was there. I don't know why but he was the Attorney General but I don't know why he, at least, the Attorney General nominee. But anyway, he was there. I got this from Tom. As Tom's Exec, Tom came back and reported on the meeting. And there was a very close bond right there established. Nixon then Kissinger asked a lot of questions as to our capabilities, our assets and what we could do to help and what have you on different aspects, and Tom was asked to give the details. Dick knew some but he didn't know all the details because he was out of the job for a number of years. When they came back, they had marching orders. It worked.INTERVIEWER: So that in '73 when Helms is out, that's the big big change?
[104-10324-10002.pdf — page 42]
SECRETMR. HALPERN: Yes. As I say that began in '72 right after the election. Nixon had his own raid but that is another story. But there was when Schlesinger came in it was just a traumatic, really traumatic, experience.INTERVIEWER: Was Schlesinger known to the Agency?MR. HALPERN: No, just by reputation.INTERVIEWER: Just by reputation. And that was?MR. HALPERN: Bad. Because of the things he had done in the Atomic Energy Commission and the Bureau of Budget. And his whole approach. Totally impersonal. The new "machine man" kind of thing, you know, the mathematical brain or whatever -- oh, I guess machine is a better stated cause.INTERVIEWER: So that reputation was known and therefore. . .MR. HALPERN: Oh yeah, not only known but it was, you know -- immediately the phone calls went out all over town asking, "What about this, who is this guy, what's he like?" And everything we got back was bad. Bad, bad, bad, bad, bad. . .INTERVIEWER: And then Colby will support Schlesinger while. . .MR. HALPERN: Oh, he not only supported him but he was one of the guys who made inputs of the information for whatever attitude Schlesinger had on the whole thing. Now Schlesinger's attitude about what he did totally changed since he's out of government, since Helms' out of government, and everybody else. It was 180 degree switch.INTERVIEWER: For Colby?MR. HALPERN: No, for Schlesinger.INTERVIEWER: Schlesinger.
[104-10324-10002.pdf — page 43]
SECRETINTERVIEWER: Yeah. And I tried to tell them. See I was Exec to Colby for about 3 months, and I tried to tell my friends -- who wouldn't believe it -- don't blame Schlesinger for what is happening to the DDP. Blame Colby. It was all Colby. He's the guy who was pushing this. And in effect even says so in the book, if you read the book, where he says he told Schlesinger he'd take care of cleaning up the DDP. You know, he knows that function. Well, yeah that's true.INTERVIEWER: What three months were you serving Colby?MR. HALPERN: February, March, April and part of May of '73. When I was his Executive.INTERVIEWER: And did the tensions simply grow after Schlesinger and Colby are working away.MR. HALPERN: Oh yeah. It lasted until. . . Well, Schlesinger left early. He left in June of '73. And it lasted even afterward. The thing didn't get settled down for a long while.INTERVIEWER: Continuing on?MR. HALPERN: Yeah, it continued. Became public.INTERVIEWER: And then people being separated from the Agency?MR. HALPERN: And I saw how some of those separations of some senior officers were done. And believe me, it was brutal. Brutal and awful.INTERVIEWER: Brutal in the context of?MR. HALPERN: No sense of personalities. No sense of humanity. No sense of the dealing with individual problems. We used to be a Band of Brothers.INTERVIEWER: Right.MR. HALPERN: I think I said that before.
[104-10324-10002.pdf — page 44]
SECRETINTERVIEWER: Yes.MR. HALPERN: That stopped with Schlesinger and Colby.INTERVIEWER: Now that stopped throughout the Agency or . . .MR. HALPERN: I don't know about the rest of the Agency.INTERVIEWER: But it stopped in the clandestine . . .MR. HALPERN: Let me talk about what I know about.INTERVIEWER: Sure.MR. HALPERN: I can conjecture about that other . . .INTERVIEWER: Right, yes.MR. HALPERN: My conjecture is almost as good as yours. Maybe a little bit better having lived there all these years.INTERVIEWER: Sure.MR. HALPERN: But, no, I am talking basically what I know about clandestine subjects. It was awful. I mean, even old friends were just, you know, ignored, looked down upon. Given no consideration whatsoever. In the old days we took care of each other as a Band of Brothers does. We helped each other.INTERVIEWER: And this included what sorts of things?MR. HALPERN: You mean the helping?INTERVIEWER: Uh huh.MR. HALPERN: Oh, if a guy had a family problem, we'd worry about his next assignment so that the family problem was taken care of. If a guy had a medical problem he didn't want people to know about, talk about, we helped him with that. People with husband and wife problems, we'd help on that. There were even problems with kids. We'd help with that. Drugs, somebody
[104-10324-10002.pdf — page 45]
SECRETimpregnating somebody -- what do you do about that kind of thing. We'd try to look out after each other. That didn't mean we didn't have professional rivalry and all of that. There was a lot of that, believe me. Who got what job and who got what promotion. But basically, when the chips were down, we were helpful to each other. We tried to find interpretations of rules and regulations to assist each other, even financially, so that you weren't so out-of-pocket on a lot things and the government might be able to help. If somebody had a problem, you know, if he was abroad for example, and something happened to a family member back here, we'd suddenly call the guy back on TDY -- we had a big important problem to worry about and discuss with him. You know, that kind of stuff.INTERVIEWER: Yes.MR. HALPERN: All perfectly legal, and it was all, we used to, as a matter of fact, we in the DDP used to look at some of our support officers and administrators and what have you in terms of how well they were able to interpret the regulation in order to help us out with a job, whether it was a personal thing, or a professional, or an operation or what have you, and I remember one of them. I'd pick up the phone and say, "Charlie, here's my problem: I've got to get from point A to point B and I've got to do it fast.""Jesus Christ. All right. I'll call you back." And within the hour, or whatever it took him, he'd say, "You go from A, to A Prime, to A Prime 2, to A Prime 3, and then you end up in B over there, and you'll get there and you'll be fine and it won't take you any time. You'll just go. Just do it my way." I said, "Fine. You prepare the papers. I'll sign them." And that's the way it worked. You know, a Band of Brothers. We knew what we were doing
[104-10324-10002.pdf — page 46]
# SECRETin terms of trying to get the job done and stay within the bounds of theAgency.INTERVIEWER: And if somebody came up for retirement, and they might needsome.MR. HALPERN: I think, we'd try to, well, in the early days when you didn'thave the bulk of people suddenly coming out, you'd even try to help them finda job. Pick up the phone, call friends, connections, what have you. And itwas done. Now later, when it came into the hundreds, you couldn't do it,obviously. And then everybody fell by the wayside. But it was a totallydifferent attitude; instilled right away when Schlesinger came along. Some ofhis language is even being quoted in the newspapers and magazines. I don'tknow if he said the words that way but anyway things like: "I am notinterested in people, I am interested in the United States taxpayer." Well,we were interested in the taxpayer too, but that didn't come first. Maybethat was wrong but at least we didn't think so. Considering the time andeffort most of us put into that place, I don't think Uncle Sam was ever on theshort end of the stick.INTERVIEWER: And so someone being separated might not know he was beingseparated untilMR. HALPERN: Until it hit him.INTERVIEWER: Until it hit him.MR. HALPERN: Yeah. I remember Colby, for example, taking home with him,which he shouldn't have done but he did, stacks of personnel folders to, youknow, be the great decider. This guy goes, this guy stays.INTERVIEWER: So the morale was not very good?
[104-10324-10002.pdf — page 47]
SECRETMR. HALPERN: Oh, it was nonexistent. Nonexistent, less than nonexistent.INTERVIEWER: Gee.MR. HALPERN: '73 was a bad year. A very bad year.INTERVIEWER: '74?MR. HALPERN: Well, I don't know. In '74 it probably got a little bit better. Things were settling down a little bit under Colby. And we weren't quite so much under the gun. About that time most of the people had been separated.INTERVIEWER: And was that harshly, that separation issue, is that Agency officers were coming back from Vietnam.MR. HALPERN: Partly that. But only partly. We had a program under Tom Karamessines and under Helms. We knew that we were going to have to bring back a lot of people from Vietnam gradually, and we started actually, believe it or not, we started earlier than most people give us credit for to plan for this kind of reduction in force in Vietnam, the Far East Division, and gradually try to sort of spread the officers back to their proper divisions and areas, and we knew it was going to take a long time. And we knew we were going to have to reduce the total strength -- we were getting cut budget wise anyway and personnel slot wise. But it was a long range program. We were going to do it over a period of time. We weren't going to do it in a day. And it was a totally different approach. One with humanity, one totally without humanity. And I think we were right in feeling that we owed the guys, after all of their years and effort, some consideration. And, you know, there are perfectly legal ways and means of using the personnel rules and regulations and financial rules and regulations to ease the passage.
[104-10324-10002.pdf — page 48]
SECRETINTERVIEWER: And make it more gradual.MR. HALPERN: Yeah, and make it more gradual and make it easier on people, and what have you. And, look, even Schlesinger had to go to Congress to get the number of retirees' positions opened under the CIA Retirement Act. He had to get those numbers raised to take care of the mass of people he was suddenly getting rid of. And he didn't even know that initially. And that was finally brought to his attention, that a lot of these people could take us to court if you just throw them out without giving them the CIRA benefits. And so they went to Congress, and Congress upped the figures (with a little bit of doing). I mean, that was one of the things, you know, just sheer humanity.INTERVIEWER: Sure.MR. HALPERN: You know.INTERVIEWER: The *Ramparts* article on the Agency and the National Student's Association.MR. HALPERN: '67.INTERVIEWER: Yeah. Was that very harmful to the Agency?MR. HALPERN: Yes. Very much so.INTERVIEWER: The flap was?MR. HALPERN: It was a big flap obviously. We had to cut back on a lot of operations.INTERVIEWER: Involving students?MR. HALPERN: Well, the students was only one of it because if you remember the *Ramparts* exposure went far beyond student activity.INTERVIEWER: Yeah.MR. HALPERN: It covered all kinds of things -- labor unions, women's organizations, religious groups -- you name them and we were involved in some
[104-10324-10002.pdf — page 49]
SECRETway or another. And practically all of those had to be dismantled. The DDP,then Des Fitzgerald, just before he died as a matter of fact, came up with aterm call "Surge Funding." S-U-R-G-E funding. And what we were able to do,all legal and all checked out with Katzenbach and the Attorney General andeverybody else, was in order to ease the way for a lot of these activitiesthat we were involved with, we gave them extra money, a pile of money kind ofthing, you know you are on your own from now on. Here, get going. Start up.And so we really did a big dismantling job. And it was very, very painful.Not only for the people involved in the activities, and including the officerswho were the case officers running the thing from inside, but it hurt theoverall effort. And one of the things, for example, even Congress finallyrecognized the need and picked up the RFE and Radio Liberty -- or Radio FreeEurope and Radio Liberty -- and is now run by the government instead of CIAfunding it. It's still the same money from Congress, except they now call itsomething else and they have a broadcasting committee that oversees it. Youknow, no difference except it doesn't have those nasty letters -- CIA --involved.INTERVIEWER: Right.MR. HALPERN: So that's the running of it. And that used to be one of thebiggest costs of our covert action operations. Those and the any paramilitaryactivity you get into. That's where the money goes.INTERVIEWER: Sure.MR. HALPERN: Intelligence operations don't cost much, propaganda operationsdon't cost much and so on. So it did have a tremendous impact, no question.'67 Ramparts.INTERVIEWER: And this was fairly new in Helms' term of office wasn't it?
[104-10324-10002.pdf — page 50]
SECRETMR. HALPERN: Yes, Helms was the DCI then. Yes, '67.INTERVIEWER: Okay. How about, the question is raised sometimes: how are reforms and real or potential abuses processed within the Agency in the decades before 1975?MR. HALPERN: In practically every case that I know of, at least it went through the entire chain of command. Usually the IG was involved, and then the Legal Counsel got involved. And people were demoted, people were fired, people were reassigned. It all depended on what the gravity of the situation was and there were all kinds of different activities including some people who did nothing more than try to swipe a few bucks. And some of those went to court actually.INTERVIEWER: Is that right?MR. HALPERN: And, in those days, we could do, with the help of the judge, have the trial *in camera* so it didn't get a lot of publicity. But we went through all the ins and outs on a lot of this stuff and depending on what the situation was, the General Counsel would take it over the Attorney General if necessary. It all depended on what happened. But there was every effort made first to try to clean it up inside the organization, inside CIA if possible. And if not you went outside and got whatever help you needed and invoked whatever laws were necessary to make sure something like this didn't happen again, and people were told. Usually you didn't get the names of the individuals involved, we always tried to protect that. And it wasn't just because of privacy or anything like that, it's the nature of the business. You don't talk about names. But the kind of activity were usually well publicized at staff meetings and passed down the line. So you tell people so these things don't happen again. You can't always be sure they don't, but you try.
[104-10324-10002.pdf — page 51]
SECRETINTERVIEWER: And how about the comment I had read earlier that Helms was betrayed by Nixon, that if Helms had gone along on Watergate and all that type of thing he would have kept his job?MR. HALPERN: Well, that sounds, it's a plausible theory, but I don't think so. I don't think it was in the cards because my own feeling is that Nixon was ready for a change, and he was ready to just clean house. Because look at the rest of his changes on personnel throughout the government after the '72 election. I mean, it was just all those crazy things. He just felt he wanted to have a new team. I personally don't think that that would have made much difference with Helms. I mean, Nixon and Helms in terms of keeping him on the job. I think he was ready for a new guy anyway.INTERVIEWER: Did you ever hear how Schlesinger happened to be chosen?MR. HALPERN: No, I don't know, except that in '70 or '71 he was the deputy in OMB and he wrote a directive, well, he wrote a study and not a directive, changing the intelligence community relationships and the Director's relationships to the intelligence community and therefore I think he was considered an expert on the intelligence community and national security policy and so on. And when they were looking for a new boss, I would think that there he was sitting over at Atomic Energy which Nixon probably didn't know what he was doing over there anyway. And so he did in 1970 or '71, I think it was '71, a study and a report and moved him over.INTERVIEWER: Had it ever been mentioned that maybe he was Kissinger's choice?MR. HALPERN: I haven't heard that. I would doubt it. I would doubt it. Very much. I just hadn't heard that one before..INTERVIEWER: Okay. All right.MR. HALPERN: That's a new one. I presume some of your other sources.
[104-10324-10002.pdf — page 52]
SECRETmentioned that to you.INTERVIEWER: I don't know. There was simply speculation.MR. HALPERN: No, I don't think so. I would be *very* surprised if that turnedout to be the fact.INTERVIEWER: Okay.MR. HALPERN: Henry doesn't take credit for it in his books. That's for sure.INTERVIEWER: And he would.MR. HALPERN: And those are nice, big, two heavy tomes. If you forgot, I'vegot them right down here.INTERVIEWER: I haven't worked my way through all of them yet.MR. HALPERN: He was supposed to have written a third one you know. But henever has.INTERVIEWER: Is that right? A third one is coming?MR. HALPERN: The third one is going to be on intelligence and nationalsecurity.INTERVIEWER: Oh really.MR. HALPERN: But he never did it.INTERVIEWER: It has not been written? Not yet anyway.MR.HALPERN: Not yet.INTERVIEWER: How about the Schlesinger memo of May 1973 regarding improperpractices in the Agency?MR. HALPERN: That's Colby's memo. Schlesinger put his name to it, but it'sColby's memo.INTERVIEWER: Okay. So, written by Colby?MR. HALPERN: Yes.INTERVIEWER: And signed by Schlesinger?
[104-10324-10002.pdf — page 53]
SECRETMR. HALPERN: Yes.INTERVIEWER: And the results of the memo are sometimes called the "FamilyJewels" or "693 List"?MR. HALPERN: That's right. That's right.INTERVIEWER: How was that memo received?MR. HALPERN: Well, I think in several ways. One of the ways was some peoplewere shocked and surprised that anybody would put it all on a piece of paper. Number 1. Some accepted it as just another order and filled out all kinds of stuff. I accepted it in terms of reading the words that were in there. I never responded to it. Because it didn't apply to me, as far as I was concerned, because none of the things that I had ever done were, as far as I was concerned, beyond the pale, beyond the law, beyond interpretation of the law or anything like that. And so it depended on how you wanted to read and interpret the language. Because if I remember correctly it said something about things that you did that you thought were beyond the charter or outside the regulations or something like that. But I don't remember anything I ever did beyond that, so I didn't respond to the thing. I never answered it. And I'm sure that I wasn't the only one who didn't answer it.INTERVIEWER: Was there much talk about it at the time?MR. HALPERN: Oh yeah, a lot of talk. Obviously. What's this all about? Why? All that kind of stuff.INTERVIEWER: Was it thought that it was related to a management style or related to Watergate or related to ...?MR. HALPERN: No, I think it was written in terms of the Watergate business, in terms of a CYA-type activity - "Cover Your Ass" Activity. I heard, again obviously, I talked about it to a lot of people, and they talked to me about
[104-10324-10002.pdf — page 54]
SECRETit. And I told them what I was doing. I told them I wasn't going to reply to the thing, I didn't need to as far as I was concerned, but I left it up to each individual that talked to me to make it up in his own mind. I don't know how many did or didn't, but I think it was in terms of a CYA thing, in terms of: here's a new man on the block, Schlesinger, and he wants to know what happened since Genesis. You know, doesn't he have anything else to do? He's got a whole Agency and a whole new world to conquer. What the hell is worried about all that stuff for? So, I think it was basically in terms of, at least the guys I talked to or talked to me, it was a CYA activity on the part of Schlesinger who didn't want to get blind sided by something that might have happened that CIA would be accused of. But the attitude was, what the hell is he worried about, it is not on his watch. If there is something is wrong, and even if CIA is accused of it, it's not on his watch. Nobody can hold *him* responsible for it. If it happened, even two years ago, what the hell. I mean, so. It might have happened under somebody elses aegis, and CIA takes the heat, but he could say, you know, it wasn't me. I wasn't around. So that was the general attitude. And as I say, a lot of people responded like good soldiers and wrote all kinds of tomes about things they thought were wrong, and not all of them were accepted. I mean that 690 whatever thing. . .INTERVIEWER: Yes, it's a list which is simply the number of pages that. . .MR. HALPERN: Yes, and these things were each on a page if I remember correctly. And these were the ones that Bill Colby finally accepted as going quote beyond the pale unquote. But even then when Bill issued his kind of after action directives, there were a whole bunch of stuff. He said, you know, these don't count. Even though I've got them, these don't count because they are not beyond anything -- they are perfectly legal and all that kind of stuff and perfectly proper. In some of these he said, we are going to stop
[104-10324-10002.pdf — page 55]
SECRETthese completely, some of these we are going to modify (and CHAOS was one of them). He didn't stop it completely. At least not initially. And these, he said, have no bearing. So his own orders, later after he got all this stuff together, when he finally tallied them all up, they were just, you know, "no," "maybe," "yes."INTERVIEWER: At the time the memo came out, was it known that Colby was the author or the drafter of it? Do you recall by chance?MR. HALPERN: My friends wouldn't believe me. I knew. But . .INTERVIEWER: You knew that he drafted it?MR. HALPERN: His hand was there all the way. Now maybe he didn't do all the drafting, but it was his initiative or what have you.INTERVIEWER: And your friends thought it was Schlesinger?MR. HALPERN: Yes. Oh, Schlesinger was getting all of the rap, which I thought was all wrong. All wrong. From the firing of everybody -- or a lot of people -- to this kind of stuff. And it was Bill who was the guy who was pushing Schlesinger into this kind of stuff. And Schlesinger was willing to be pushed, don't get me wrong, and he wanted to do a house cleaning and a sweep, and all that kind of stuff, but without Bill it wouldn't have gotten half as far. I'm sure.INTERVIEWER: Why was Bill doing that?MR. HALPERN: That's a good question. People have asked me that continuously and I don't know. Some people have said that partly it was because of his daughter's problem. And you know she died very early on when he was DDP --DDO; sorry: I get my terminology confused by the dates. And I don't believe that because his daughter's psychological problem was there long before, even