e amt, Phone (Area 202) 544-6000 tO aD - 10 il 13 WARD & PAUL 14 15 16 1? 18 19 20 a1 Re £5 24 410 First Street, S.E., Washington, D.C. 20003 25 _ community. and he phoned and asked that I come over. And I went over 1é | the next eight. years of President Eisenhower's Administration. | There were some strengthening acts, as far as unification were concerned, under President Eisenhower which I think were exceedingly desirable. I do not know of any legislative action during those eight years regarding the intelligence Then my next relationship to this subject came in the spring of 1961. President Kennedy was then President, at once. It was just after the Bay of Pigs, and in all of the years I had known him I had never seenj;shim as serious as he was on that occasion. The substance of his comment was that he had just had a major disaster and he said that the reason for the Bay of Pigs being such a catastrophe was one, “YW d1waas FHL WOdd AdODOLOHa od he’ said -- and this is in effect -- I made the wrong decision; two, I made it because I had the wrong advice; three, I got the wrong advice because the facts upon which the advice was based were wrong; and the facts were wrong because our’ intelligence was faulty. He indicated - that he had been informed that as soon as the invading group reached the shores of Cuba that the people would rise up against Castro, they would be down on the beaches tossing roses at our men, and then they would ae triumphantly march through the streets of Havanna. “Well, it was a real tragedy, and he said that’ I cannot endure another FOP SECRET HW 55355 Docld: 32204959 Page 4
21589. 265 amt 22 -. . LAB nad 1 one. He said I could not survive another disaster of this é kind. So he said I am creating an intelligence board, and 5 || he had already talked to Jim Killian of MIT and he said I am Phone (Area 202) 544-6000 4 making him the head of the board and I have gotten some 5 scientists and some military men and others, and I awant this 6 “board first to investigate, I want them to investigate all of ? the foreign operations of the CIA, and.I want you to recommend 8 changes that will improve that operation. | 9 So that the Vice President can pick up the theme, 10 I had gone through, Governor, the earlier phases of my 11 experience with the intelligence operation, and then I had 12 |} gotten through down to the fact that I was away fora © 13 || number of years during the Eisehhower Administration, .and now WARD & PAUL 14 I had gotten down to the spring of 1961 when President Kennedy - qdod °a GTWaaS FHL WOUT AdODOLOHA 15 ‘called and told about the disaster that had befallen him at the 16 Bay of Pigs. And he said that I must not have. that happen 17 again. He said I was startled and shocked at the fallacies 18 in the intelligence information that we received, and I want 19 to take whatever steps I can to imppvove it. 20 _ So he appointed the President's Foreign Intelligence . Pal Advisory Board, which you are thoroughly familiar with because . 202 of your service upon it. We met at the time, met with him, r 23 and he told -us of the seriousness which he attached to the 24 function of the Board. He issued a directive at the time to- 410 First Street, S.E., Washington, D.C. 20003 25 ‘the military services and to the CIA and other government -FOP-SECRET HW 55355 DBocld:32204959 Page 5
amt 26 | | FOP-SECREF =. 4593) 2 : 1 great contributions to that. We had two very fine men, Dr. g é William Baker of the Bell Laboratories, and Dr. Ben Lamb é 5 of Polaroid. | They worked very closely, and the Board i 4 encouraged them, got all the money from the President that they 5 needed. We improved that a lot. We also got a great deal of 6 |’ information in what is known as SIGINT, COMINT, ELINT and . 7 RADINT -- signal intelligence, communications intelligence, : 8 electronics intelligence and radar intelligence. The NSA has __ S 9 spotters all through the world and they pick up all of the : 10 radio signals that go out, and when the Soviets launch a ' 11 test missile we follow it from its inception, we £ollow its Fi Q : 12 ||. whole flight, we determine whether it was successful or not. : 13 || . | | We know down to the day almost the degree of success . < 14 that the Russians have had in MIRVing their missiles. “all of : 15 that is very valuable. I remember being in one time 16 and going into a room and here sat three hundred 17: all of them with those great puffy earphones on, and all they 18 were doing was monitoring any kind of signal that came out of 2 19 China. And it is very good. You pick up troop movements, ; 20 you pick up plane flights, you pick up missiles tests. None 8 21 of it is quite as good, of course, as having the Deputy E 22 Premier being a CIA operative, but we. are pretty well going ‘ 23 ||. to have to give up that thought. We thought, the Board. did, | é 24 that we could penetrate Cuba, and we gavel a lot of. time to “ 3 25 that. At no time did I ever hear anybody suggest that Castro HW 55355 Docld:32204959 Page 6
amt 27° Phone (Area 202) 544-6000 10 11 - 12 13 14 WARD & PAUL “15 16 1” 18 19 20 21 22 23 r4 410 First Street, S.E., Washington, D.C. 20003 25 locations, and every one of those teams were rolled up. Not: extraordinarily effective counterintelliigence system. That _is, he has a head of Counterintelligence, and in each each city or hamlet there is another top man and then in each found. You will remember that Cuban-U.S. confrontation'that 159 was going to be assassinated; or that there was any planato assassinate Castro. But we were concerned about Cuba. President Kennedy :was concerned about Cuba. We wondered whether or not there might be something going on between Cuba and the Soviet Union as later did. And I guess, I think I can remember six or seven teams who were wonderfully well trained and sent to Cuba at various times, landed at various one of them endured. And the reason is that Castro set up an province, he has a deputy, and under that man in each town or’ block there is a man, or in each precinct, and then in each i Gdod °d GIWYID FHL WOYT AdODOLOHA block, and if the block isa large block, even down to two or three sections, and their main job is intelligence. It exists in the towns, it exists out in the country, and if a stranger puts his face in Cuba today, in twenty-four hours I think this person is apprehended and he is brought in for interrogation. | | So, we have to find other means and other means were came later, and the presence of the Soviet offensive missiles in Cuba being discovered by our satellite type intelligence. We photographed ships at sea with devices on their deck, very HW 55355 Docld:32204959 Page 7