Track 1 vs. Track 2
In my last post I outlined the history of two tracks for political assassination within the CIA during the Cold War. The first track was essentially “tops down”, in some instances beginning with remarks from the president and put into action by orders from the Director of the Agency. Examples cited included Eisenhower’s elimination remark in regard to Patrice Lumumba, and Clinton’s kill order on Osama Bin Laden. In other instances the initiative came from within “senior levels” of the Agency – as when the head of Western Hemisphere operations proposed the “elimination” of Fidel Castro.
In practice assassinations efforts were actually overseen by senior officers in the Plans/Operations Directorate. While best known for his success in technology projects related to the U-2 and satellite reconnaissance, Richard Bissell’s move into covert operations led him to play a key role in assassination activities. His activities included launching two separate efforts to eliminate Lumumba (one using Staff D external assets) and again turning to Staff D (and external assets) in a poison effort against Fidel Castro. For a time Bissell seems to have been at the center of CIA political assassinations activities – all of which involved the use of assets from outside the CIA (often criminal assets) or the use of CIA surrogates (as with the shipping of rifles to the Dominican Republic which were ultimately used in the assassination of Rafael Trujillo).
Bissell, acting though his aide Tracy Barnes, appears to have also exercised a decision making role in regard to assassination proposals coming up from inside the CIA (Track 2) , including those forwarded up though case officers. . In one instance Barnes had proceeded with with a plan (proposed by a Cuban contact) to kill Castro by downing a Cuban airliner – only to have the project stopped by Bissell.
Yet following the disaster at the Bay of Pigs, by early 1962 Bissell had left the CIA, replaced by Richard Helms. And Helms, in a repetition of practices, ssigned the head of Staff D, William Harvey, to the task of political assassination. Harvey, having also been assigned to head the CIA portion of the ongoing effort to over throw the Castro regime, reactivated the earlier effort against Castro.
The point of reiterating this history is literally that it is history. The activities described above were discovered by the Church committee in its work on CIA political assassination. While there were limited paper trials for certain of them, CIA funds had been approved, and the efforts which came from the top down (Director level or Deputy Director level) are visible as sanctioned projects. Humorously enough some of the records come from within operations, with supervisors requiring formal authority to spend budgeted money or assign personnel without someone telling them what was going on (as with the Castro assassination plot or the problems getting someone inside Staff D to accept the directive to target Lumumba).
Where matters get much less clear, are those assassination activities that appear to have been enabled by CIA case and field officers, most often responding to proposals from their surrogates. Examples include a series of rifle attack plans against Castro which appear to have been suggested by paramilitary assets including Felix Rodriquez in early 1961.
As I’ve written about in multiple books, there appears considerable evidence that field officers working on anti-Castro projects had become very much involved in enabling surrogates simply by allowing them to operate inside sanctioned activities, using monies, weapons and even sanctioned missions for secondary purposes. Individuals such as Rip Robertson carried piggybacked attacks in that manner, and Tony Sforza can be shown to have enabled surrogates in assassination efforts not only inside Cuba but on to the Allende coup in Chile in the early 1970s.
Which leads to the subject of my next post. In that I’ll take a look at what was happening within the CIA in regard to JFK in 1963, and the activities which provide some insight as to whether we see a Track 1 tops down vs. a Track 2 conspiracy leading to the attack on the President in Dallas. .
