INTERVIEW WITH SAMUEL HALPERN BY DR. MARY S. MCAULIFFE
Originator: CIA
From: MCAULIFFE, MARY S., DR.
Document date: 01/15/1988
Document type: PAPER - TEXTUAL DOCUMENT

## Page 1

AAAAR

1104-10324-1000:

2022 RELEASE UNDER THE PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY ASSASSINATION RECORDS ACT OF 1992

Interview with Samuel Halpern

by Dr. Mary S. McAuliffe

15 January 1988

Alexandria, Virginia

ORIGINAL DRAFT

with markings by Mr. Halpern

---

## Page 2

13-00000

2202 Popkins. Lane

Alexanaria,

VA. • 22307

February 15, 1988

Dr. Mary S. McAuliffe

Staff Historian

Central Intelligence Agency

Dear Dr. MAuliffe,

Enclosed is the corrected transcript of my interview

of Jangary 15, 1988.. I am sorry I was not able to full in

al1 the

several blanks. If I could hear the tape, I might

be able to decipher it. My compliments to the transcriber

for getting as much as is there.

I did not realize I was being so earthy, for which

I apologize,

nor that I was talking in incomplete sentences.

Thetext would never pass muster as even a draft of a term paper

in class, but it is what I said. I hope it is still helpful.

If you haven't already received a copy, I suggest you

ask Bill Henhoeffer of HIC for a copy of some ten pages I put

together on the "Booknötes"

of Bill Buckley's Mongoose,

RoIoP.

They are more complete than my comments on that subject in

my interview abd should be appended to it.

I enjoyed doing the interview and am available to do

more

on subjects thought to be useful.

Sincerely yours,

muel talper

samuel Halpern

---

## Page 3

13-00000

Interview with Samuel Halpern

15 January 1988

Alexandria, Virginia

by Mary S. McAuliffe

MSM: We'll go back to the beginning of MONGOOSE, we're talking 1961

the last part of 1961 through '63 to some extent.

SH: MONGOOSE actually finished at the end of the Missile Crisis in

1962 and lasted exactly one year. From October '61 to January

'62 I was Deputy Chief of what was then called "Branch 4" of

the Western Hemisphere Division. Branch 4 consisted of Cuba

and all the Caribbean Islands. When we started into MONGOOSE,

by the time January came around it was quite clear that that

couldn't exist any longer in that particular organizational

bureaucratic setup, and Dick Helms, who was then the elope, I

guess it was, or chief of oilatin? guess, decided to take

Cuba, at least, out of WH4 and set it up as a

separate branch

then

within WH, still under the Division Chief, **

• Col. J. C.

King. In January of '62, because things were getting hot and

heavy with the Kennedys on our tail, and I kept screaming--oh,

by the way, the man who was the Branch Chief was Ghosn Zogby

(of Lebanese extraction), who was a long time Agency employee

(he's now dead, unfortunately) --he was Branch Chief, I was his

Deputy,

Of so-called Branch 4. When Cuba was taken out and

made a

separate branch under J. C. King, Zog (nickname)

Сива

continued

as Branch Chief, and I continued as his Deputy until

I was screaming loud and long to Dick Helms that this is

;

crazy.

MONGOOSE, because it was called MONGOOSE as of

196/

octoberf-and I'm

the guy who came up with the name;- I'll give

1

---

## Page 4

13-00000

called MONGOOSE as of October 1961--and I'm the guy who came

up with the name--I'll give you that background later--which,

by the way was never used in the Agency. It was

never an

Agency crypt. It was an Agency-supplied

cryptonym, but we

never used it.

MSM:

What did you use in the Agency? Was that where "Caribbean

Survey Group" came in?

SH: No. That was a bunch of nonsense. The Caribbean Survey Group

was something totally different. I'll get into that later.

Anyway, I kept screaming to Helms that the likes of a Zogby

and a Halpern are not what this operation needs, because this

was not a CIA operation, it was a political operation, in the

city of Washington, D.C. And, being a political operation,

you have to have a big name in charge, you have to have some

political power.

And I started off with Helms, and he said,

"OK, who do you

want, smart guy?" So I started off saying, "I

think we need Des Fitzgerald," who was then Chief of FE

Division (and I'd been his Executive Officer in FE years ago,

now called EA Division). But he said "No, he's fighting a war

in Vietnam, can't use him." I said, "OK, my second choice is

Al Ulmer," who was then Chief of Station in Paris. I had been

Al's Exec in FE Division when he was Chief of FE in '56 or

'57, '58, I guess. And he said, "No, can't spare him." My

third choice was Tom Karamessines, who was then either Chief

2

SECRET

---

## Page 5

13-00000

in Vienna or Chief in Rome, I'm not quite sure. I think Chief

in Rome.

Again, Dick said, "Nope, can't spare him." I said,

"My fourth choice is Bill Harvey," who was then Chief, FI

Staff/Division D, and I thought he could be spared. Anyway,

Dick

said, "I'll think about it." A few weeks later, still

January of 1962, Bill Harvey came over to a meeting we were

holding, zog and I were holding, in terms of what do we do to

answer some of the pressure from the White House. How do we

write papers which in effect says to the President "You're

just full of it, it isn't going to work, you've got no assets,

you wanted it all done by mirrors, and we can't do it, but

we'll try." Well, that is not a forward looking paper. And

Zog and I had to have some kind of help in terms of how do you

draft in the English language something which says: "It isn't

going to work, boss, but we'll try." And make it sound good!

Anyway, Bill came over one day to one of these meetings, and I

thought to myself then, "Whoops, maybe we're going to get Bill

to take over." Because this is a political operation inside

the bureaucracy of washington, DC; it's got nothing to do

with Castro. Bill came over, and shortly after that

particular meeting, which was then in the old Quarters Eye

Building, where we were still stationed in the old Bay of Pigs

offices--shortly after that, Bill became the Chief of what

later became Task Force W. And when Bill came over and Task

Force w

was created, it was quite clear that Bill could not be

subordinate to J. C. King, so Cuba was taken away from WH

ECRET

---

## Page 6

13-00000

SEENIT

Division and made a completely separate task force all of its

own.

from being Deputy Chief of Branch 4 in WH Division,

I became the Executive Assistant to the Chief of the Task

Force, TEW, in January '62. I presume that answers. your

question.

MSM:

Yes,

very completely. Thank you. My next one will be a broad

sort of one. What, as an Agency historian, do you think I

should know

about Operation MONGOOSE that I might not

know--that is not known or has been misrepresented?

SH: : Oh, that's easy. Let me start off--I happen to have this by

accident, sheer accident--Bill Buckley's new book, called

MONGOOSE, RIP. He says it's fiction, but he also says, on

pages 319 and 320, in something he calls "Booknotes," he says,

"This is

a work of fiction. The most conspicuous historical

characters are obviously characters in history. And some of

the episodes are drawn from official and non-official, but

creditable sources." I'm still reading. I'll take this apart

bit by bit as we go and you'll understand why I'm doing it.

"Operation MONGOOSE was the name given by the CIA to the

attempt to assassinate Castro from 1961 to 1962 and to related

questions."

Period. End of Quote. That is a bald-face lie

from beginning to end. The name MONGOOSE was not a name given

by CIA to any operations. Ed Lansdale, General Lansdale, as

the Chief of Operations for what became known as Operation

SECKIN

---

## Page 7

13-00000

General of the United States, who we'll presume reported to

the President, his brother. Lansdale asked CIA--and I was the

officer involved--for a cryptonym he could use for this

national--I use the word, "national"--operation. All agencies

were involved. It was not

a CIA operation. I went to the

cryptic reference officer--I forget her name, Mrs. Gilbert, I

think--at the time, and I said, "Give me a cryptonym with a

digraph on the other side of the world--away from WH Division

or Latin America." I said, "This is going to get all over the

building anyway, let's confuse them as much as we can for at

least five minutes. And when the cryptonym gets all over the

world, let's confuse the Russians for a while, because their

penetrations abroad will pick it up faster than we will."

But, being an old Far East hand, I said, "How about Thailand?

See what they've got in the MO digraphs." She came up with

a

whole list of digraphs, and I remember telling this to Fritz

Schwartz of the Church Committee Staff. He thought I was

playing games when I picked MONGOOSE, because of the old story

about the mongoose and the snake--an old Indian proverb or

legend. I said, "Nope, I'm not that smart. Totally

ignorant. The word MONGOOSE just sounded good." So I picked

MONGOOSE, and I gave it to Ed Lansdale. It was his cryptonym,

his operation. It was & across-the-board Army, Navy, Air

Force, State Department,, Commerce Department, Treasury

Department--every agency in the government was involved in

this one. It was not just somethiny simply a CIA operation.

5

---

## Page 8

13-00000

And

we never, never, never used MONGOOSE inside the Agency as

a cryptonym to refer to TEW.

We had our own action indicator

for cables and dispatches, and we had our own info indicator,

and that's what we used.

We never referred to it as

MONGOOSE. I had one rubber stamp made, just for fun and

games. I had one rubber stamp made--MONGOOSE. It never saw

an inkpad. To this day, it's as clean as a bell. It's never

been used.

The reason I can say that is because I have it.

As a souvenir. So, people talking about MONGOOSE as a CIA

operation are just talking through their hat, they're dead

wrong. And even looking at the Church Committee reports, you

will find that they don't refer to MONGOOSE as a CIA

operation. CIA was part of it, no question of that. But so

the Army, so was the Navy, so was everybody else,

including the State Department. And that's where you get that:

reference to the Caribbean Survey Group. That's a State

Department, was a State Department-run coordination committee

of sorts. It had a fancy title, that's all. It was part of

the MONGOOSE activities, but that was State's share of the

operation. So, let me keep on going here. He [Buckley]

says:

"MONGOOSE was a name given by CIA to the attempted

assassination of Castro." Not true. MONGOOSE was never an

operation designed to assassinate Castro per se. MONGOOSE was

an operation to change the government of Cuba, and there were

no holds barred, that's true. And if that meant

assassination, or if somebody felt that meant assassination,

6

---

## Page 9

13-00000

so be it. But it was not started out as an assassination

operation. It was not meant to be an assassination operation

per se. The idea was to somehow change the government of

Cuba.

Even

as Lansdale's stupid memorandum talking about

assassination, or

e not using the word

"assassination "d

--that was an afterthought.

later in the game.

phrase,

MSM: "In August of '62.

SH:

Yes. And we'd been operating since October '61, for God's

sakes. So, for Buckley or anybody else to label MONGOOSE a)

as a CIA operation and, b) as an attempt to assassinate

Castro, is crazy. It's just absolutely false.

Let me go on

to the next one he's got here. All of which he's trying to

prove that everything he's got in here, while it's fiction, is

based upon fact. It's not. He says: "The attempt to

assassinate Castro via a wet suit to be given to Fidel Castro

by James Donovan without his knowledge was made." Not true.

The wet suit wasn't even bought. We never even had a wet

suit

I dost ovan ker

Donovan went ahead and did it on his own without

referring to anybody, as a gift in terms of his negotiations.

about freeing the Bay of Pigs prisoners. The business of a

wet suit was somebody's brainchild. The name of the man who

thought of the idea was George McManus. I don't think George

is alive anymore, but anyway, George came up with the idea,

7

---

## Page 10

13-00000

"Look let's give Jim a present to give to Castro." And the

idea was not to assassinate Castro via the wet suit, anyway.

It was to disable him, make him sick. But the thing never got

I dont think we

off the ground.

fernamer even bought the wet suit. Didn'

need to, because by the time we were thinking about it and

discussing it and wondering what the devil to put into the wet

suit to make him sick, Jim had already given him the wet

suit. So we dropped it. And that brings me to another point

that's

in the beginning of the book here, by the way. very

fortuitous. Buckley starts off the book, in an unnumbered

page right in the beginning, quoting from the Church Committee

Report, which says, "We have found concrete evidence of at

least eight plots involving the CIA to assassinate Fidel

Castro from 1960 to 1965." That's totally false. There were

no eight plots, because among the plots--their so-called

alleged eight plots--one is the wet suit, which never went off

the drawing board. Another one was Des FitzGerald's idea

of

that exploding seashell. And that one never got off the

drawing board; it never even got on the drawing board. Des

came in one morning and said he had come up with an idea while

he was shaving. "Let's make up a fancy seashell, fill it with

explosives, put it on the ground, on the seabed, and when

Castro sees it he's bound to go for it, and it will blow up in

his face."

I looked at Des and I said, "you're crazy. It'll

never work."

He says, "You're always negative. Go talk to

TSD. "

It's now called OTS. I said, "Okay, I'll talk to them,

8

---

## Page 11

13-00000

but it's crazy. How the hell are you going to control that

thing? How are you going to make him go for that one shell

among a lot of others on the seabed? In the first place, how

the hell are we going to get it onto the seabed?" And he

says, "Go find out." Okay, I dutifully went and talked to the

TSD people. They looked at me and said, "Is Des kidding?" I

said, "No, he wants to know what's the chances." "Tell him

it's zero."

So

I went back and told des it was zero. That,

my opinion, is not a plot. And neither is it an attempt to do

something. It never got off the ground. And among these

eight that they've listed--and I remember making the same

notations on the report when I wrote it and made my comments

on it...

MSM: This is indeed a quote from the Church Committee?

SH:

This is

a quote from the Church Committee Report. Among those

The very nept

sentere; afte

the mee

eight plots are things like this which never got off the

ground.

We sat around and thought of all kinds of crazy

things, because those were the requirements--to think of all

same parampapt,

kinds of crazy things, and we did. But they weren't plots;

southat mat all

they

weren't attempted. There were a few that were, and we

he pests were

strally put

can get into those later. So, what is being said as fact is

into effeit an

It's just not true. And, let me go on. Ok, the top of

that most to

Navel as steadpage 320: "The attempt to poison Castro by poison pills

P.WN the Chasthrough his mistress is factual (e.g., Paul Meskil, "CIA sent

alleged Assassination

9

---

## Page 12

13-00000

the House

Assassination

Committe

Reparty 1979

pp-156-157,

p. 176 and

p. 1692)

^

Bedmate to Kill Castro,' New York Daily News, June 13,

1976). " The woman--and I remember the story though I don't

have the clipping. I remember the story. The woman may have

actually felt that she was recruited and working for CIA. we

never, never, never, never sent a mistress or a bedmate or

whatever you want to call it as one of the activities to try

to undo Castro. We just didn't. Other people may have used

CIA in terms of a false flag recruitment and convinced her

they were working for CIA, and that happened many a time. We

know, for example, that the US Army, Army Intelligence, used

CIA for cover in some of its activities in support of

Operation MONGOOSE, down in Miami, but we didn't know a damn

thing about it. And they were claiming they were CIA

operators, and recruiting people. And I think there is pretty

good circumstantial evidence, if not hard evidence, that the

Garcrafonter felting plan, for which they went to prison he

and a brother, or he and a son, went to prison for

counterfeiting Cuban pesos--I think the poor people were just

taken down a garden path. They thought they were

counterfeiting for the CIA. And they weren't. We never got

into that. The Army did, I think. And the Army, I think

again, used CIA as part of a false flag recruitment for a lot

of people. So. I think this poor woman, and she may very well

have gone to Cuba for all I know, but she didn't do it for

the

CIA. And we've tried, but there is no way you can

correct

Hubbleat record. It's impossible. It just won't wash.

10

---

## Page 13

13-00000

Even if you got all the files out, nobody is going to believe

you. But that never happened. We did not use the woman

to

try to get close to Castro. No way. So that's

a phony one.

Let me think.

No, we did try to give him a rifle.

MSM:

Which ones are correct in there? In his list.

SH: Well, I'll give them to you. "The allegation to the effect

that the Soviet Union had left in hiding in Cuba one or more

nuclear missiles, were made by Cuban refugee sources and later

by Senator Keating." That's true. Allegations to that effect

were made. So that part is true. And Keating was one of the

ones

making it. But he [Buckley] goes on to say, "These

charges were denied by Robert McNamara and John McCone on

February 6, 1963." And that's also true. But there was never

any evidence that any of the missiles were ever left behind in

Cuba.

And there wasn't enough geological evidence--and I use

word

that carefully, because the idea was that these missiles were

being hidden in caves.

MSM: McCone worried about it extensively.

SH :

Oh yeah, and we had cave experts up the gazoo going into this

whole thing in terms of

the size and shape and configuration

of the caves of Cuba, and there was lots of information about

it, believe

me.

Nonpolitical stuff. Purely measurements and

had

what have you. A lot of people done a lot of work on that.

11

---

## Page 14

13-00000

(See g889+90

I the church

Committee

alliged

Assassinatio

discission

about the

rifle.)

^1.

And the DDI people in those days were able to dig it all up

and prove that you couldn't put those missiles in any of the

caves in Cuba. Not unless they built special caves for them.

And there was no indication that they had ever done anything

like that. So, true, allegations were made, and, true, the

allegations were denied. He's right about that. I don't know

anything about the assassination of Blanco Rico by Rolando

Cubela, and that I presume he got from the sources he lists

here, as well as I'm sure Granmal, the Cuban newspaper, had a

lot about Cubela at the time of Cubela's trial. And so a lot

of it may have come out there. That I just don't know. The

next one is true. The attempt to expedite the assassination

of Castro by providing Cubela with an appropriate sniper's

rifle is factual. That part is true. fishe only trouble was;

he never accepted it. He never took the pen, the hypodermic

pen; that we prepared for him. And the rifle, I don't think

he ever took, either. Although we were authorized to give it

to him. Or, rather, Des had authorized us to give it to

him.. The next one is the statement by Castro threatening

retaliation against political assassination--that's factual.

Yeah, he uses an awful source for that.. There's no reason to

use George selle on that as a source, "washington post article

1976

of May2,#6. Castro's statement was made in September of 1963,

and

Tad Szulc used

it quite a bit, FBIS had it, so there is no

Crile

reason to use George late as a source on this. And this one

is a queer one: "The sponsorship of Operation MONGOOSE by

12

---

## Page 15

13-00000

President Kennedy and Attorney General Robert Kennedy is

asserted by Thomas Powers and John Ranelagh."

Why use Powers

and Ranelagh as sources for that? The Church Committee will

tell you that right there. That's crazy.

The next one is:

"Although any direct knowledge of the plan to assassinate

Castro was denied by CIA director John McCone, (Church

Committee, Powers, Ranelagh) it is widely questioned that he

was in fact ignorant of the operation." He was ignorant of

the operation, believe me. He didn't know a bloody thing

about it:

McCone was literally ignorant of the operation.

Nobody was about to go check with him on this one. And,

again, the Church Committee report is very clear that

depending upon which activity you were talking about, McCone

never knew about the Rosselli business, without question he

knew nothing about the the Rosselli business.

stithout

nestiot

never knew about

as intes. And as

far as the AM/LASH or the Cubela activity is concerned, I

doubt if even Helms knew about it at the time. Des was

keeping this close to his chest. And, as I reported to the

House Assassinations Committee under Congressman Stokes

several years later, there were four people who knew about the

attempt to assassinate Castro using Cubela, and the four

were: me, the case officer

involved dealing with Cubela, Des

FitzGerald, and the doctor who provided us with the fountain

pen made into a hypodermic and told us what to use. Four

people in the Agency. Those were the days when you could

13

---

## Page 16

13-00000

still maintain some kind of limited activity, or limited

knowledge rather than activity.

As I said, I don't think Des

even told Helms about it, let alone McCone.

MSM:

Why not McCone?

SH:

It's the same as you don't tell the President the details.

The job of the Agency is to carry out orders.

The details are

something else.

MSM: And the orders came from...?

This is the old question.

SH:

As far as I'm concerned, it came from John F. Kennedy.

MSM:

Through Bobby?

SH:

Through Bobby.

MSM:

Through Lansdale?

Or just directed?

SH:

Directed, Des and tennedy" were pretty close.

MSM: Do you know that for a fact, or is that just simply the way

you assume it must have been?

14

---

## Page 17

13-00000

SH :

MSM:

SH:

MSM:

SH:

I think it's the way he reacted, the way he talked, the way

Des

talked. The pressures Des relayed. His attitude when the

President was killed. And the conversations he had with his

wife, Barbara, in terms of going over to the house, the

Kennedy house. Things like that. There's no question in my

mind, they were close. Now, how close, I don't know. First

name basis,

sure, no problem.. Whether they talked to each

other about investments or whether they went on vacations

together or not, I don't know. But as far as this particular

activity is concerned, there is no question in my mind. Des

wasn't just doing these things out of his own mind. The

pressures that he relayed practically every morning when we

got into the office were just unbelievable. I've never been

on an operation like that

before in my life, and I have been

in some fairly sensitive ones. It was just different. It was

just an attitude. We were all under the gun to do something

and do it fast. And there were no excuses accepted of any

kind.

"You," meaning you, Helms, FitzGerald, Harvey...?

Well, there are two different periods

yes, I realize I'm

mixing two periods.

And I happened to

be in both periods, unfortunately.

15

---

## Page 18

13-00000

MSM: Pre-Missile Crisis, post-Missile Crisis...

SH:

Yes.

MSM:

By "under the gun," you mean the pressure that was being

exerted by Bobby?

SH: By Bobby and by the President.

MSM: By Bobby on behalf of the President?

SH:

Oh yeah. Bobby was on the phone to case officers on the Task

Force, and later the Task Force became calted SAS. And

Bobby's secretary--Angie, or Angela--she was on the phone

relaying orders from Bobby, as well. Io case officers, right

down in the--we were in the basement, Ge, whatever it was--and

I remember we had to have a case officer, for example, whose

sole job was to carry out Bobby's wishes vis-a-vis the

underworld--let me call it the gangster world. This case

officer was given--and I'm not trying to be racial on this

thing, or ethnic--was given an Italian-sounding name. The guy

looked like he belonged on the Redskins' line. Huge, big,

hulking guy. Lovely fellow, marvelous guy. And his sole job

in life was to go to the various people that Bobby sent him

to, all underworld types, all across the United States,

because Bobby had the idea that since the underworld had had

16

---

## Page 19

13-00000

lots of connections inside of pre-Castro Cuba, that they must

have

left their own

staybehinds behind there. And therefore

they knew the place, and had the place pretty well wired for

information. Knew how to survive. And why the hell wasn't

CIA tapping this resource, this marvelous resource? And we

had to tap it. So we assigned one guy full time, and the

telephone calls he got from Bobby, right out in the--we had a

big front area, the only way we could devise it: there was

the Chief's office, the Deputy Chief's office, my office, and

what they called the "big arena," where we had abunch of

secretaries out in a big bullpen kind of thing. We had a

couple of phones, the outside lines, out in that bullpen. And

that

→ Charlie was always answering the phone or being

called to the phone,, because his boss was calling--namely,

Bobby. And, "OK," Charlie would say, "Guess I got another

trip to make." And so, the pressure was direct. It didn't go

through channels, believe me. McCone didn't even know about

all this. Helms didn't know about this, except for what des

told him. Charlie would stick his head in to me--he wasn't

going to bother; first Bill Harvey, and then later Des--he

wasn't going to bother them with all those details. "I'm

going off on a trip." you don't bother the boss with, "I'm

going off to Denver, I'm going off to las vegas, I'm going off

to Miami, or whatever. He would stick his head in and say,

"I'm off again, Sam; good-bye." I'd say, "See you when you

get back." What else can you do? And the whole idea was to

17

---

## Page 20

13-00000

go out and talk to these people, whoever they were, and bring

back all these wonderful ideas on how to get rid of Castro.

And that was the phraseology--"get rid of Castro." It didn't

mean assassinate him, per se, just meant change the

government. But if it meant

assassination, fine, too.

MSM: Bobby used that phrase extensively in meetings,

and it can be

taken either way.

SH:

Take it exactly what the phrase is--"get rid of." He didn't

say, "get rid of, except don't have him break a leg," or "get

rid of, but don't have him catch a cold"--just "get rid of."

You can take it any way you want. There were no holds

barred.

MSM: Most of the activity, the assassination attempts, you seem to

indicate took place under Des FitzGerald rather than...

SH: : Not true, not true. The ones I knew about. There's only one

basically, the AM/LASH operation. The only one I was directly

involved in.

I say these four people were the only ones

involved in that one. Under Harvey, Harvey being a good old

bureau

man, kept his own counsel, and all of his dealings with

Rosselli were unknown to me and unknown to his deputy. (Pause

for

telephone call). I was commenting about the fact that

under Harvey, his dealings with Rosselli were not known to

18

---

## Page 21

13-00000

mech

hear

tape

?

anybody. They weren't known to Ted Shackley as Chief of Miami

(JMWAVE in Miami, the station). They were not known to Bruce

Cheever, who was Harvey's deputy. They were not known to me,

Harvey's Exec. Harvey kept his own counsel. And I guess

about the only one who even knew that Harvey had been in touch

with Rosselli may have been Shef Edwards, but Shef would never

know the details. Shef maybe put Rosselli and Harvey

together, or at least his Office of Security did, originally,

but Harvey wouldn't tell anybody a bloody thing, I'm sure. so

Mccone wouldn't know about that, and that's what I was

referring to here. I think McCone's an honest guy, and when

he said he didn't know that there was an assassination going

on or

_ what have you, I believe him. Every

second of the way.

MSM: How come Helms didn't?

SH :

What Harvey told Helms, I have no way of knowing. On the

AM/ LASH?

MSM:

No, I mean Helms didn't

seem to believe that McCone could not

have known.

SH :

Well, the only thing I think with McCone is the same,

and he

said it in the Church Committee report, is that he couldn't

have gone along with any kind of assassination because

he

19

---

## Page 22

13-00000

would have been excommunicated from the Church, and he is

very devout Catholic. And so, I take the man at his word.

Why Helms thought that McCone had to know something, I don't

know.

MSM:

Because he did indicate this again and again throughout the

hearings. It's an interesting mystery.

SH: I don't know. He had better relationships with McCone than I

ever did, that's for sure. so I don't know. I didn't know

McCone from a whole in a wall.. First time I really got to see

McCone in action

was when I was & DDP representative to the

inter-agency committee doing the after-action report on the

Cuban missile crisis, which McCone chaired. And I saw him

first time in action, in real action, with coat off andly

shirtsleeves, into the wee hours of the morning--and it was

quite

session, several sessions. And McCone was a rough

taskmaster, very rough. And at the time I thought he was an

awful DCI, but in retrospect, I think he was the best

ever had.

MSM:

For what reasons?

SH:

be close

The guy knew how to manage.

He had

to Freid to

the President,

which is the first job of any DCI--at least in our days, that

was the first thing. We didn't have to worry about Congress

20

---

## Page 23

13-00000

so much in those days. and maybe it sin the world now, and

you have to divide your loyalty, which I think is wrong.

Because as far as I'm concerned, CIA is a part of the

Executive Branch, and the head of the Executive Branch is the

President, and not the Congress. And I think there's a

division of labor there which Congress steps over the line too

often on all kinds of things, not just intelligence. Anyway,

McCone had good relations with the President, both Kennedy and

then Lyndon Johnson, and when he lost that good connection

with the President, Johnson, he guit. And that was the right

thing to do. And he quit in '65. He wasn't asked to leave,

he quit. And I think McCone knew how to get things done, knew

how to manage, knew how to delegate, and did not confuse

himself with all kinds of minutiae, as some of our Presidents

have done.

Like Carter and Kennedy•

MSM: Kennedy, too?

SH :

oh, Kennedy was awful on minutiae. As I testified to the

Church Committee--Bobby, particularly, and the Special Group

(Augmented), which was the group that oversaw or had the

oversight for the Operation MONGOOSE--when

we presented plans

to them for sabotage operations into Cuba, the questions were,

"What kind of shoelaces are the men going to wear?," and

"What's the gradient of the beach?," and "what kind of sand is

there?" Now that's ridiculous for a man at that level to

21

---

## Page 24

13-00000

1

worry about that kind of stuff. That's the same thing that

happened during the missile crisis itself, when the white

House was trying to tell the Navy commanders at sea, the

Atlantie

Admiral of the fleet, how to load his guns.

In what order to

put the armour piercing, the tracers, what have you, bullets

in the machine guns, in the airplanes.. Now that's nonsense.

And this is why, I think, George Anderson finally ended up as

Ambassador to Portugal.. He got kicked out of the CNo job

because he tried to tell the White House, "Hey look, the Navy

knows how to run

a ship at sea, for God sakes." And that's

why I say McCone was a good officer, a good director--I think

he's the best.

So anyway, that digresses from MONGOOSE.

MSM: Can we go back to the beginning of MONGOOSE?

SH:

We can go back. I just took this [Buckley book] as a text. I

got so mad when I read that. Because people.

will believe it.

That's the trouble.

MSM: You were talking about MONGOOSE's origins in October of '61.

The first document I find in DCI papers is the first meeting

McCone attends. It appears to be an early meeting, if not the

first. As I recall, it

is about November 2lst in '6l.

Richard Goodwin is there, I believe, Lansdale, Bobby, the

president and McCone. Very small group. And they are

discussing things, and it is very much at the beginning.

22

---

## Page 25

13-00000

SH:

It's not really the beginning

MSM:

It's after the beginning, okay. And McCone says, "Okay, this

is fine, but all this activity, all these operations, are

going to have to come under the oversight of the 5412

Committee. The President agrees, and Bobby agrees. Somewhere

along the line we seem to get

a Special Group (Augmented).

It

is never quite clear. Is Special Group (Augmented) the

Special Group 5412 plus Bobby?

SH :

Yes. And Taylor, General Taylor.

You've got it, right there.

That's the augmentation.

MSM: I've read it a different way. I think powers, Ranelagh and

those have described it as coming out of Special Group (CI),

which was

a much larger..•

SH:

Much larger.

MSM: And CI seemed to have nothing to do with Cuba. It was

everything but.

SH:

That's correct. I think the Church Committee history of that,

I think Karalekhs got this particular part of it right. she

got a lot of

things wrong. As a matter of fact, when her

history came out, in '75 or '76, I sent her something like

23

---

## Page 26

13-00000

jid how

I hear

the tape t

to nestout

thas juice.

twenty-odd pages of handwritten corrections of things that I

all

knew about, so she didn't get it

Fright, either. But I think

fin this particular aspect...[comment on Church Committee

report]. Oh, there's tons of stuff that's wrong with that.

You should see my copy of the thing, it's all marked up. of

things that I know about. God knows there's lots of things I

don't know about. And I know more than I need to know, I

suppose anyway. But anyway, coming back to the Special Group

(Augmented) and the origins of Operation MONGOOSE, I think

that the creation of the Augmented, I think it's fairly

accurate if my memory serves me, in the Church Committee

Report itself--and you can check that, look at it.

I don't

want to take the time now; we can if you want to. But let me

give you a little bit of background on this. I came back from

Saigon in October '61. And after giving my report

to both

Des, who was then chief of FE Division, and to Bissell, and to

(I guess) Helms, as to what I thought about the situation in

Vietnam at the time--and this was when there was a grand total

of 3,000 Americans--men, women, and children--in saigon, if

you can imagine what it was like. It was beautiful. Stilla

little old French city, except that the VC, the Viet Cong,

were all over the place. After giving my report about how bad

I thought the situation was and some recommendations as to

what

should be done, I was told to take a

few days off, go

home and relax, forget about it. And I didn't have any

assignment at the time as to what I was going to do next. I

24

---

## Page 27

13-00000

^

was sitting out in the back yard here and had

the radio on and

a beer in hand, and suddenly they announced that Walt Rostow

and two guys from the White House were going out

on

a mission

to l00k at the situation in Vietnam. I said, "Well, my report

had some effect, anyway. They won't believe me, but at least

they're going to go check me out." I went back into the

office in October '61, and I was told to go see Bissell.

Bissell, whose career had been ruined by the Bay of pigs, and

everybody knew it, and he didn't know how long he was going to

be

around anyway--he allowed as how he had a job for me. And

the job was Cuba. And I said, "Where the hell is that?" And

so, he sent me over to see Zog. And that was

the first time

I'd ever met Zog. And then, that same day Bissell called for

both zog and me to come back and talk to him. And it was at

that time, early October '61 (and I can look it up on my old

calendar to see just what day it was, if necessary), he

said--and this is actually quoted in the Church Committee

report, because I'm the guy who told them--Bissell said he had

been in the Cabinet Room at the white House, and he was told

by both the President and by Bobby to get off his ass and get

rid of Castro.'

That's the beginning of MONGOOSE, as far as I

know it. And then he said that Ed Lansdale was probably going

to be in charge of the operation. It was going to be

government-wide operation, under tight control, and that Ed

would probably come over to get a briefing from us. well, Ed

came over--this

was before MONGOOSE itself was actually

25

---

## Page 28

13-00000

^

formalized, because I don't think that was formalized until

sometime in November--McCone wasn't even on the scene yet.

McCone may have been a gleam in Kennedy's eye, but he sure as

not

hell wasn't in charge yet. He was on deck. I don't think

McCone came around until November, sometime. Ed came over and

staged all kinds of screwball ideas and laid out his plan for

the operation. All the agencies of the government,

particularly CIA, State Department and at aspects of the

Defense Department were going to detail men, money and

materiel, plus space, to what amounts to a new agency headed by

Lansdale. And these people

and the money and

everything else

was going to be taken away from these agencies, on detail, and

Ed was going to run a new agency against Castro. This was

Ed's idea. No other way to do it. Well, we thought it was

crazy.

MSM:

Mccone thought it was crazy.

SH: You're damn right, because we sent out papers right away

saying, "Whoops, what's going on here?" McCone, Rusk and

MacNamara, not only said "No," they said "Hell, no. The money

is appropriated to the respective agencies by the Congress of

the United States; we're responsible to the Congress of

= the

United States for that money, etc. etc. You can't take the

stuff away from us. We'll do all we can to help, but through

the normal chains of command." So in effect, Lansdale became

26

---

## Page 29

13-00000

Chief of Operations, technically and theoretically through the

various Secretaries--the two Secretaries and the DCI plus

whatever other agencies he needed help from. In practice, Ed

dealt directly, for example, with weed Bill Harvey after Bill

was named in January of '62. Before then, Lansdale dealt

directly with zogby and me. And he used as his. ftape

Hial son with us, a

man named, frank, Hand, second stder and Frank was the guy

who was actually the legman between Lansdale and zog and me.

I knew Frank from way back--he was an old Agency guy, and he

had been sent to the Pentagon on detail. As a matter of fact

it was Frank's suggestion that got me thinking about abort

something bigger than a

Zogby and a Halpern. At this level,

you need some political weight in this town, and that's when I

went through that whole business about getting somebody else.

And I remember Frank

saying, when Bill Harvey was picked in

January, he said

to me, "Now, Sam, the Agency is showing good

sense. They finally put a real top-notch operator in.

charge." That was the attitude of Bill as a rough tough

5.0.b. On the outside. Inside, he was soft as melted

butter. A wonderful guy to work for. If you didn't mind

having a loaded gun pointed at you. So MONGOOSE began in

October '61, shortly after I got back from Saigon, and didn't

become formalized until

, I think it was, November '61, and

that's when you had your meetings that you probably have

records of.

27

---

## Page 30

13-00000

MSM:

Right. Right.

There's a Presidential Directive that appears

at the end of the month.

SH :

Okay, as you

well know, by the time a Presidential Directive

gets put together and signed, a hell of a lot of stuff has

happened before. And, while theoretically that's the formal

beginning of an activity, its genesis is long before that.

It's just like the Church Committee. It didn't spring up out

of nothing in January of '75, it began months and months and

months before, by other people who were looking into

destroying CIA, and they succeeded. Anyway, that's the

beginning of MONGOOSE. And, as I say, I didn't even give that

the cryptonym until sometime in '62. So, you didn't even have

a name for it. But he was looking for it. That's the

beginning of it.

MSM: A period that I find terribly interesting in respect to

MONGOOSE is the Cuban missile crisis. During the crisis, the

Agency has been portrayed as being a rogue elephant in Cuba,

and...

SH :

And Garthoff's latest articles about the teams that Bill sent

in?

MSM:

Right.

What was

really going on with Operation MONGOOSE

during the Cuban missile crisis?

28

---

## Page 31

13-00000

SH:

MSM:

SH :

MSM:

SH :

The teams that Bill sent in were not sabotage teams, contrary

to what Garthoff says. They were, in effect, pathfinder

teams. Intelligence teams, reconnaissance teams--whatever

phraseology you want to use. They were not, repeat not,

sabotage teams. And you don't have to accept my word for it:

go talk to the guys involved who were down in Miami

at the

time. Talk to led shackley--that's who the teams left from.

from Florida. And Ted is in town somewhere. But those were

pathfinder teams.

Reconnaissance teams. Bill's idea was,

that if the US forces were going in--and everything looked

like they were going to go in (they sure as hell were getting

ready for an invasion, and they were making no secret of it,

they wanted the Russians to know--they were going to need

some kind of help getting in. And it is always nice to have

somebody on the beach waving you in, telling you that's the

way to go. Rather than go stumbling across some landmines or

something.

Was this his idea alone?

Bill's?

That I don't know.

This is what I need to find out.

I don't know if you'll ever find out. Maybe you'll find out

by talking to Ted, but it's possible even Ted wouldn't know.

29

---

## Page 32

13-00000

Bill was a man who kept his own counsel. I don't think Bruce

Cheever would know either, if you talked to Bruce--Harvey's

deputy.

MSM:. My question really comes down to, when did the President call

a halt to MONGOOSE operations?

SH: It was long

after the Missile Crisis.

MSM:

Okay.

Because it has been claimed that the intent of and the

direction from

Bobby and the President was to call a halt to

operations. in Cuba during the Missile Crisis.

SH:

We never got any word. At least I never saw any orders to

that effect:

MONGOOSE was

a hell of a lot more than just an

assassination plot, as I tried to explain. All of our

activities around the world, in terms of intelligence....

collection--all of our assets inside the island of Cuba, on

the island of Cuba, were still being tasked for collection of

intelligence, no matter what the hell was going on. And in

that regard, MONGOOSE didn't shut down. Until after the

missile crisis.

MSM: And as far as you know, no one told or gave the direction to

shut it

down?

30

---

## Page 33

13-00000

SH:

Never saw it. Never heard of it.

MSM: Was Harvey fired or removed from Task Force w during the

middle of this missile crisis? And, if so, what happened?

SH:

I think it was right after--well, the Missile Crisis only

lasted about what--ten days?

MSM:

It was over by October 28.

SH: Yes, 14 days, two weeks. What happened, as far as I know

it--and this differs from what you're going to get from Walt

Elder, if you talk to Walt (Walt was McCone's Exec., and

sometimes I think he forgot he that

was an Exec. and not the

Director, but that's between Walt and me, and we've had this

over the years--we're old buddies). Harvey, at the white

House, told the President and Bobby what he thought of them in

no uncertain gutter language, in McCone's presence. He just

let himself go. The exact words I'll never know--I don't

think anybody will ever know unless McCone remembers them.

But Bill was so mad, so angry at the whole effort (I guess

maybe even starting with the Bay of Pigs, for all I know--at

the attitude and the way the Kennedys handled themselves, in

that they were more concerned about the Kennedy escutcheon

than they were about the security and

safety of the United

States. The Kennedy name meant more to them than anything

31

---

## Page 34

13-00000

else. And Bill just let himself go, to the point where McCone

had to remove him and couldn't let him go back to the White

House again.

MSM:

This was during the missile crisis?

SH:

During the Missile Crisis.

MSM: Do you know when?

SH:

I'd have to really think about that one. I just don't know.

MSM: Where did you hear this? I'm curious.

SH :

From Bill.

MSM: From Bill:

SH :

And from Bruce Cheever, who also heard it from Bill. Bill

just let himself go. He told President Kennedy what the hell

he thought of him, that's all. It's very hard to do that to

any President and survive, let alone with the Kennedys. And

McCone had no choice but to remove him. And then, when that

happened, somehow Helms got into the act (Helms was then DDP),

and

Helms saved Bill's ass, and didn't fire him.' And he kept

him out of McCone's view. And not so many weeks or a couple

32

---

## Page 35

13-00000

with the

ar

Mclone

Kennely 3)

MSM:

SH :

MSM:

SH :

ot months later, he sent Bill ore talenter of station, some.

Just to get him the hell out of the way, so he wouldn't be

around the building and all that kind of stuff. And Bill went

off in early '63 to Rome. And des came down (I say "down,"

because we were still in the basement), he came from FE

Division to head up the Task Force, because Des had already

blotted his copybook with MacNamara, anyway, about VietNam.

we had some strong characters in those days. Guys who didn't

give a good goddamn about anything except getting the job done

right. And Des came down to take over from Harvey. And

changed the name from TEW to SAS. So that's where Harvey, in

terms of his relationship..

• And he was saved by Helms.

So this account, this report that at the height of the missile

crisis, the Kennedys ordered a complete halt of operations

against Cuba, but despite these instructions Harvey approved

the landings, and as a result of that, McCone so livid with

Harvey that he removed him from Task Force W--that is just not

true at all?

Not as far as I know.

Not as far as you know. Okay.

And I was there.

If such an order had come through,

I would

have had to have seen it. Bruce Cheever would have had to

33

---

## Page 36

13-00000

have seen it. In order to transmit it down to the troops.

Somebody

would have had to send a message to JM/WAVE. There's

no other place. JM/WAVE was our station in Miami, actually

south of Miami.

But anyway, you have to find such a message

in the cable files, and go through the cable registry and see

if you can find it. And you won't find it. As far as I know,

you won't find it. There was no such standdown, as far as I

know.

MSM:

That's very interesting.

SH:

Not during the missile crisis. By jingo, we were looking for

information everywhere you could find it, and there was only

one way to get intelligence--that's from agents. And so we

were looking and looking and looking.

MSM: Could it possibly be the other way entirely--that, instead,

during the missile crisis, the Kennedys were putting the

pressure on Task Force w, putting the pressure on for

operations?

SH:

The only pressure I remember is pressure for information.

Information, information, information. They wanted to know

what was

going on.

MSM: How about sabotage?

34

---

## Page 37

13-00000

SH :

No, that had stopped anyway. Simply because we couldn't, you

couldn't put together an operational plan that was going to

satisfy the Special Group (Augmented) well enough to get it

going. Every one of our plans, every single one, had to be

presented to the Special Group (Augmented), so they could ask

about things like shoelaces. It took months, literally

months, to put that kind of stuff together. Like the

Matahambre mine, for example. And it was kind of crazy.

SO

when you talk about sabotage operations, they weren't going

off like clockwork every hour on the hour, every day on the

day, every week on the week. It took weeks and months of

planning to get even one

going.

MSM: But the Kennedys--I've found some evidence that Bobby was

demanding an increase in sabotage operations right into the

early part of the missile crisis. That he was putting

pressure

on.

SH :

You may have found, I don't remember that particular...

MSM:

You don't have any...

SH:

Noy recollection. If I saw a piece of paper, I might remember

a piece of paper I might have looked at. But there definitely

was not a standdown as far as I know--not on intelligence

collection or propaganda or anything like that. But the

35

---

## Page 38

13-00000

sabotage operations--we didn't need to have Bobby keep on

pushing us. By that time we had enough. of the whipfash to

keep looking for new plans--"How do you blow up this or blow

up that, or cause some other problem?," and those were

intrained all the time in terms of the guys on the PM staff.

We had our own PM section working on plans for "what do we go

for next?," "what are the targets?," and "how do you do it?"

And that never stopped. We kept doing that all along.

MSM: What was the relationship between Lansdale and the Agency?

SH: Let me put it in terms of a fighting relationship. How about

that? That's a fair summation. Most of us thought that Ed

was for the birds. I knew Ed from

way back in

early

incarnation of the Philippines. When he made his name. He

fell flat on his face in Vietnam because he and Diem never hit

it off. With Diem, he pulled out, because Diem couldn't stand

him any more. It was counterproductive to keep Ed in

Vietnam. .

(This was in '54). He did very well with Magsaysay,

no question about that. But we always thought he was kind of

a kook. Most of the guys, in

the old FE days, anyway. When

he was put in charge of the Cuban thing, we thought he was

even kookier. Even before it became MONGOOSE as MONGOOSE,

when he came over for his first briefings in the old Quarters

Eye Building (we were using the old Bay of Pigs war room, as a

matter of fact, and they had a huge map of Cuba on the wall),

36

---

## Page 39

13-00000

and he saw the Isle of Pines, and he said, "What's that?" So

we told him--what little we knew. This was

the blind leading

the blind (I was just barely learning where Cuba was myself).

So we had some other guys around from the old days that were

still there from the Bay of Pigs, and he said, "What's on the

island?"

So we told him, including the Modela Prison and so

on. And he said "Whoops, that's it." And I said, "whoops,

what's what, Ed?" He said, "We'll take the island, we'll make

that our

headquarters command post, and we'll operate off the

island down to Cuba." I said, "Ed, are you serious? You've

got to have rocks in your head. You couldn't get within miles

of that place, let alone take the island." He said, "oh,

that's no problem. We'll just take it." I said, "Ed, you've

got to get your feet on the ground. It won't work. You can't

do it."

He said, "Oh, we did worse things than that in

Vietnam and the Philippines." I said, "Ed, I know about the

Philippines, I know about Vietnam, I know what you did, and

this isn't going to work." But that's how flakey he was. In

addition to, I think you've seen the Church Committee

Report--this business about the Jesus Christ superstar.

That's Ed. So we had a fighting relationship, and everything

was done at arm's length, and I think that's one of the

reasons he

used Frank Hand as a go-between--at least at my

level and, to some extent, Bill Harvey's level. But Harvey

wasn't going to take any crud from a guy like Ed. He'd call

it like it was, and if he didn't like it.

could

go complain

to the Director.

---

## Page 40

13-00000

MSM:

Were things getting particularly bad with Lansdale, relations

with him, during the missile crisis? There appears to have

been

a major organizational disruption of some sort. I can't

figure

out what it was.

SH:

I don't know just what you're referring to. I don't remember

anything as such. Things were hot and heavy, and people's

tempers during the missile crisis were very short, let me tell

you that. Including mine being short with some of our own

case officers, some of our own personnel in the Agency. I

needed some money, for example--I needed cash one night at

about one in the morning. I needed all the cash the Agency

had in the building to send people out with neutron counters,

to find out if the nuclear warheads were coming in. And some

poor little guy, some finance officer, couldn't understand

this at all.. And he wouldn't do it. I called the Director of

Finance and, with no by your leave, I said, "If you don't

believe me, that I've got the authority to do this, then you

call the director.

But I want that cash down here in jig

time, now

So people's tempers were short, very short, and

nobody was being polite to anybody during those fourteen days,

believe me.

On any subject. And it was rough.

MSM: What about the end of MONGOOSE and the end of Special Group

Augmented?

38

---

## Page 41

13-00000

SH :

It just disappeared.

It died.

it.

It just--as if it never

existed.

Nothing special was said about

MSM:

Both of them?

SH:

Yes.

MSM:

This was after the missile crisis?

SH: After the missile crisis. Everything just dead in the water.

We continued to try to collect some intelligence, we weren't

planning any sabotage operations, everybody knew that Bill was

leaving, the new boss had not been appointed. You can get a

much better feel by talking to Bruce Cheever on this than you

can from me, because he was the guy who was really holding the

fort together, and I was helping him. But it was Bruce who

was in charge, technically. And things didn't start perking

up until January of '63, when Des was appointed. And Des came

down, and we went back into business. And all these stories

that have appeared over and over again by the Kennedy

clan--that CIA went off on its

own

after the Cuban missile

crisis, and the Kennedys wanted to be friends with Castro and

all that kind of

nonsense--is nonsense. It is sheer, utter

nonsense, because we started back up again under Des

FitzGerald, because the Kennedys were saying, "What the hell,"

you know. "Castro is still there. Do something. Do

something!" So that's when we started all over again.

---

## Page 42

13-00000

MSM:

Of course you were getting prisoners out during this time,

too.

SH :

CAp

Prisoners were in December. And the speech that Kennedy made

down in Florida to the Brigade when they came out, you

know--that this flag will be back in free Cuba, free Havana,

and all that kind of stuff--there was no letdown by the

Kennedys. Even though the Schlesingers of this world and the

Mankiewiezes

Mantewitzes of this world keep on making out that it was CIA

that did it, and not the Kennedys. It was the Kennedys who

put des in charge of the next effort, and it was the Kennedys

who pushed us again into the whole business. And we kept

saying, you know, "This isn't going to work any better this

time."

MSM:

And then it ended, with the end of the Kennedy administration,

with the assassination.

With the assassination of the President. We

continued for a

unss about

the effort. (?) while, but Johnson felt. I we were arguing against running

sabotage operations all along, but we had to do it. The

Kennedys wanted. boom and bang. After Kennedy died, we

continued for a

short while, because Rostow (Walt Rostow)

wanted to continue the effort and got Johnson's OK on that.

And we continued sabotage operations I think until '65.

Despite the fact that we were arguing against them all along.

40

---

## Page 43

13-00000

"Let's stop it, stop it, stop it. It's counterproductive.

We're not getting anywhere."

But we continued to follow

orders. That's why it is so ironic to be called a rogue

elephant by anybody, when

all we were doing was trying to be

900đ

soldiers.

MSM: Well, I appreciate this very much. All the information you've

given me here this morning. Anything else you think I should

know?

SH:

Depends on how much you want to know about MONGOOSE.

There

are a lot of gory details.

MSM:

I'm not writing a history on MONGOOSE.: This is really a

history on McCone.

SH :

He was a good boss. In retrospect, he was the best we ever

had.

MSM:

In retrospect, not at the time?

SH:

Oh, at the time, if you were under his lash you would not have

exactly felt right

about it either. He was a very rough

taskmaster. You were entitled to one mistake.

Literally, one

mistake. And then don't ever darken his eyes again. It was

rough. I remember, for example, during one session of his

41

---

## Page 44

13-00000

post-mortem on the missile crisis, poor Pat Carter, General

Carter, was cut to ribbons by McCone. Literally cut to

ribbons. You could almost feel the blood flow. The way

McCone just tonguelashed him in front of the entire

USIB and

all of the hangers-on, including

me.

MSM: For what?

SH :

1

On the Cuban missile crisis, the beginnings of the Cuban

missile Crisis. On the handling of the SNIE, that famous SNIE

which said the Russians have never put missiles abroad, therefore

they'll never do it in Cuba. And McCone, of course, sitting

off in Nice knew goddamn right they will.

MSM:

And he sent back honeymoon cables

SH:

Yes, and Carter didn't buy them at all.

MSM:

And that was what McCone was cutting Carter up for?

never had any record of that, that's marvelous.

I've

SH:

You won't find any record. It was

all oral.

I don't think

they taped

it.

MSM:

This was

after the missile crisis?

42

---

## Page 45

13-00000

SH :

oh yes.

This was the post-mortem.

MSM:

When would this have been? November, December?

SH:

YeS.

Something like that. And I was the DDP rep.

Harvey--let me give you

a little bit on this...

Bill

MSM: Yes. I'm very interested.

SH :.

Jack Earman was IG.. Ken Greer was one of his officers on the

IG staff and Ken, I think, is living in Minnesota or something

like that. Oh, there was another guy, a nice young fellow.

I

can't think of his name. Anyway, Jack and his staff were told

to do, in effect, a post-mortem. And they started doing it.

And Jack apparently called Bill Harvey and said (Bill was

still sitting there in charge) to assign somebody to help him

on this thing from the operator's point of view.

MSM: Harvey was still on Task Force W at this time?

SH:

Yes. This is right after the missile crisis.

He kept sitting

there until he left, went off to Rome. As a matter of fact,

when des came down, he was still there in January of '63. He

was sitting, not in the--we called

this the bullpen, which was

a big room across from the secretaries' rooms (I could sketch

it out for you if you're interested sometime). He kept sitting

43

---

## Page 46

13-00000

there anyway.. As a place for quarters and rations until he

went to the Italian desk. Jack wanted somebody (and Jack's

dead also, unfortufftely). He wanted somebody to represent

the operators on this thing, because everybody was

there,

from

the State Department, the DDI types, the Defense people from

all the various services, etc. And I was detailed, and Bill,

I remember, saying to Jack, "How long is this going to take?"

And Jack said, "Oh, about a day or so." Well, it lasted a

couple of weeks. But anyway, it was quite a

session. And one

of the sessions I'll never forget was when we got into this

detail, and I was surprised at McCone doing this. It's one

thing to whiplash your deputy or a subordinate in private.

It's another thing to do it in what I call public,

particularly when there are a bunch of junior officers

around. And, hell, I was a 15 or 16 in those days, and that

to me is a junior officer compared to the people sitting

around the table. Roger Hilsman was there, Kirk was sitting

there, and poor Pat Carter. Every time he opened his mouth he

was browbeaten by McCone.

Over and over again. In not polite

44

---

## Page 47

13-00000

language, which I was surprised at from McCone. I never heard

him use--it wasn't gutter language, it wasn't barracks-room

language, but it wasn't polite, gentlemanly language. And I

don't remember the exact words, but the feeling I had was, in

effect, saying, "Well you dumb ninny, what the hell did you do

that kind of thing for?," you know, and that kind of stuff. I

cringed, literally cringed, sitting up there. Poor Pat

Carter. I would have cringed for anybody being given that

kind of treatment.

MSM: Do you think that was typical of the relationship between the

two?

SH: I don't know. I have no idea. Walt Elder would give you a

better feel

for that than I can. Apparently, it wasn't good.

No matter what it was. It couldn't have been good. Not to

get that kind of a treatment. And this was only in one

session, and we had numerous sessions. First we had our

working group sessions, and those went on interminably. I

remember Bill McAfee, the State Department representative

from

INR. Bill and I were old friends, and we got to be better

friends as a result of being on this committee. Bill and I

exchanged glances, I remember, at this particular session, and

we wondered what the hell was going on. It is unlike senior

officers to do that. So when you talk about relationships

during the missile crisis,

and even afterwards, it was touch

and go for a lot of people.

45

---

## Page 48

13-00000

MSM:

^

What were the real sensitive issues you had to deal with

during this post-mortem?

SH:

In the post-mortem? The information that we collected--I mean

that we, the operators, collected.

The uses made of the

information by the intelligence analysts. Not just CIA, but

all the analysts. How they downgraded all the information

that we provided. Some of it was our own fault, the

operators' fault, because--let me give you an example of what

I mean there. On some of the most significant (there were

about eight, if I remember correctly--six or eight really

significant reports) about missile sightings, which were

downgraded by the entire community (the analytical side of the

community), and on one or two of them (I'll never forget this,

because it was our fault and I had to admit it

at the meeting)

the headquarters comment (we had headquarters comments in

those days, I don't know if they still do), the report itself

said that the agent reported to have seen something that was

sards

meters long. Headquarters comment ga

that the source

probably meant 30

feet long. And I hadn't seen this. Jack

King--John Kerry King--was the Chief of Reports for the Task

Force, and he was the guy who saw it and Ok'd it and put it

out. I didn't see it until much later. That in effect cut

the feet off of the report. So it was that kind of sensitive

issue in terms of collection capability, the sourcing, the

reports writing of it, the headquarters dissemination of it,

46

---

## Page 49

13-00000

and what was done with it by the analysts. And everybody was

fighting for turf. And everybody was sensitive as to whether

they did anything right or wrong. That was one of the

issues. Another issue was the mechanics on handling

overflight photos. The Navy took some pictures, for example,

of one Soviet merchant ship at sea bringing stuff in with big

holds, big hatch covers. It took ten days for those photos,

ten days, to show up somewhere on the analyst's desk. What

happened to the pictures for ten bloody days? And you're

sitting on the Soviet side, you see the plane overhead coming

down low in a swoop and taking a picture, Navy markings and

all (it was a Navy plane), and you report back to Moscow, you

know, "Plane overhead, I'm still heading for Havana." And

nothing. The US government doesn't do a thing for ten whole

days.

So, if you're sitting in Moscow on their version of a

National Security Council, you're thinking "Well, maybe they

don't care. So, okay, we'll keep on going." That was a

sensitive issue. What happened in those ten days. The Navy

couldn't figure--I don't know to

this day that they ever

figured out what the hell happened to those bloody pictures

for ten whole days. Whether they were sitting in some chief

petty officer's in-basket or what, nobody knows.

Sensitive

issue

#3 that I remember: NSA in summer of '62, July or

August, I believe, put out an analysis (theoretically, they

weren't supposed to, but they did) of what all these Soviet

ships coming to Cuba and leaving Cuba--you know, we were

47

---

## Page 50

13-00000

counting all these ships coming back and forth. It was a

regular parade.

And NSA puts out an analysis saying the ships

are there to remove from Cuba all of the excess military

nardware the soviets have put in!

Well, obviously, at the

time of the missile crisis, NSA immediately asked everybody to

return this Top Secret COMINT-handled HVCCO and all that kind

of stuff. And all copies being recalled. Well, as good

officers, everybody always made copies of everything being.

recalled. But there was another issue. What the hell was NSA

doing, doing analysis? And the question was whether they

should be prohibited in the future from doing analysis. There

were a lot of turf battles of this kind going on. I can go on

in terms of what was being

kicked around in terms of

problems. You know, us operation guys, for example. Were we

concentrating on

the

right targets in terms of getting our

assets? The whole missile crisis began with a fluke, a pure

and utter fluke. And again, it took time because of the

method of getting the report.

we had an agent in the fanatios

would hare t

bearthotape

Rio province and one of the

on one of the fines;

and he reported

Is tig to fill the

that there wigh sid pea lately cleared an at thing, people and

names of.

jap

precisely where it was, so he gave us little towns. We

plotted the towns, and it turned out to be a trapezoidal

shape. But that report, which is the one which targetted the

U-2: and led to the overflight (and we in the

operations

couldn't ask for the overflight. We had to ask our MONGOOSE

compatriots in G-2 who were involved in this thing and cleared

48

---

## Page 51

13-00000

for MONGOOSE, they had to ask for the overflight.

We

couldn't. Don't ask me why, but those were the ground rules.

We couldn't ask for it. So we had to ask them). They came

over to our war room and I was in the room when they plotted

the damn thing, and there was a trapezoid. But that report

took ten days to get to us. It was

SW, secret writing, I

don't know what type of secret writing techniques he had--it

could have

been lemon juice for all I know. It took ten days

for that to get to our chemists to develop the bloody paper.

To get the report. Before we could even see it. Now, why did

it take ten days? Well, international mail. I forget whether

he was mailing it to Spain or

mailing it to Mexico, or what

have you, but anyway, that was the only route 'that we had

out. Why didn't he have a radio? Big argument, you know.

What about the size of the radios? You can't get

the radios

in, and etc. etc. etc. But those were big arguments that

were going on. So there were those kinds of problems

in terms

of the operators. Were we doing our job properly? Why didn't

we do it sooner, faster? Why didn't we learn about the

missiles coming in before this particular report? Well, you

had all kinds of reports about missiles. But where do you

draw the line? And the analysts of course were defending

themselves in terms of, "you cut off your own report by

telling us it's 'feet' not 'meters,' so we couldn't take that

on face value," etc., etc. So you keep on fighting about

these.things.

The Defense Department guys were being slammed

49

---

## Page 52

13-00000

around, the G-2 guys particularly, for not cooperating better

with us in terms of combined assets on the island to find out

about these military pieces of hardware, and so on and so

forth. You name the problem and

we were kicking it around.

And each time it was related to the Cuban missile crisis

itself. And it was a handy tool, if you wanted to hit

somebody over the head, to hit them with, and it was hard to

defend on a lot of things. And all you could end up with was

saying, as I think the Senate Armed Services Committee ended

up with its report saying, that in retrospect, the

intelligence community as a community worked well, we

discovered the bloody missiles beforehand, before they were

ready to use, etc., etc. And the important thing about

this--and people keep forgetting it--is the worldwide

intelligence effort.

It's not just on one island of Cuba.

Even in the missile crisis. People forget about penkovskiy.

photograph

Without Penkovskiy's 5,000

atrames, we wouldn't have known what

the hell they were doing on the island. And I remember

talking to the photo man, and you can talk to--do you know

Brugioni?

MSM: No, I do not.

SH:

Well, talk to Dino. He's retired, and he's around here,

and

he's a great guy.

50

---

## Page 53

13-00000

MSM: I've read his article on this.

SH :

2

well, without

that report, without first of all the

trapezoidal report, we

wouldn't have known where the hell to

send the U-2.

Because even with the report--I'll give you

another example, part of the fight of the port-mortem.

During

the COMIREX approval, the overflights and all the flights had

to be approved. At that time, in October of '62, the

overflights were limited to four flights a month. By whose

decree? State Department, I guess. But somebody had decreed

four flights maximum. And if weather or mechanical failure,

or what have you, canceled any one of the flights, you didn't

save that flight for the next month. You had four a month, •

whether you flew them or not. And so, when the report of this

trapezoid came in and the G-2 people at our instigation asked

for an overflight of this particular spot on the western part

of Cuba, I'm told it took more than 10 days to get that

approved; to get the flight approved, because the State

Department representative--I don't know who he was, and I

never want to find out because I'd go shoot him--he said,

"No.

We've been flying that part of the island all the time.

We haven't flown the eastern part for a long time. Let's fly

the east." And it took 10 days for the bureaucracy to argue

that out, so the flight could go where it's supposed to go.

So all of this was being kicked around at the missile crisis

post-mortem.

I learned a lot sitting there. I was the junior

51

---

## Page 54

13-00000

officer present. You learn a lot listening to all this

stuff.

As to what was going on in the bureaucracy, it was

fierce.

I hope they've made changes. But anyway, all of

these things were surfaced on the table. Everybody was

arguing pros and cons. Some things were done, and approvals

and changes were made, stuff like that.

One big change that

was made after that had nothing to do with that particular

committee.When Des took over from Harvey, because of this

reporting problem and the headquarters comments that were on

there and the fact that a lot of the reports that we had

provided from

human sources were downgraded by the analysts

because

a) it wasn't a picture, and b) it wasn't COMINT, SO

without the two nothing else matters. Des had, and over the

objections of me, Bruce Cheever, and a hell of a lot of other

officers

in the Task Force (SAS by this

time), asked for a

senior officer from DDI (I forget his name now but I think you

can find it in the record) to come down and Des would

make

available to him all-source information of each and every one

of our sources.

True names, true positions,

the whole

business.

Never been done before. At least I'd never heard

of it. And des wanted this very senior, well respected

officer, had been around years, to just sit and look at who

our sources were. And to tell him frankly, are they worth

anything or not? As I say, we fought it and we argued with

Des and I think he didn't even ask--he was the kind of a guy

who wouldn't even ask--he didn't even ask Helms' permission.

52

---

## Page 55

13-00000

He told Helms he was doing it, period. Helms said, "Okay,

give it a try." When this guy finished, he was amazed, and he

said, "You're downgrading your own sources by not putting in

better bylines to tell the analyst a little bit more if you

can." He

said, "You've got some wonderful sources." And he

went back to his own people and told them that. And I must

say, he never, never, never, never once divulged a source. So

things like that came out of the missile crisis and came out

of

the post-mortem committee. Of course Des heard a lot of

this stuff, he'd looked at a lot of this stuff, and he was

flabbergasted. So I hope other things were done the same.

The COMIREX thing got reorganized somewhat.. And the State

Department didn't have that final clobber on it any more.

From four a month we went to practically four a day if we

could fly. We flew as many missions as we could fly. And

then of course the big fight between the CIA flying it and the

Air Force flying it. And there was more sweat back and

forth. All of which was kicked around. I don't think anybody

kept any notes, I don't think anybody kept any minutes. A

final report was written

and had more bloody cryptonyms on

that report than you can shake a stick at. I wasn't cleared

for half of them at the time, and I said that to sombody. And

they said, "Don't worry. At this stage of the game it doesn't

matter."

The bulk of that report was actually then sanitized

and given to the Senate Committee--I think it was the Armed

Services--and they used a good bit of that final report in

their final paper.

---

## Page 56

13-00000

MSM: That's the Earman report.

SH: No, it was after the Earman report. The Earman report was the

first draft, kind

of. And then we went to the USIB, the

conference, the big conference where poor pat Carter got

clobbered. Then after that, we had to sit and make a final

report that McCone could give to the President. And also a

copy went to PFIAB. And that you ought to be able to find.

MSM:

Yes.

SH :

That was a good report, I thought. My blood's in that one.

Sweat, tears.

Every comma and semicolon. (Laughter)

MSM:

This has just been fascinating. I really appreciate it.

SH:

well, it's history.

MSM:

Yes, it is indeed. May I call upon you again to clarify any

questions that I might have?

SH:

Anytime, anytime.:

--end. of interview-

54

---