Surrogate Operations
It’s been delayed, but I’m finally able to return to the third post which I had promised on the subject of where and how political assassinations originated within the Cold War CIA – and why assassination attempts and actual assassinations could occur without any authorization, or even involvement by senior CIA officers. Such things came about due to two basic structural issues with the way the Agency conducted covert operations.
The first issue, and fundamentally the most dangerous, was that in virtually all its military operations the CIA relied on the use of surrogates in order to preserve deniability. And those surrogates were almost all political exiles, expatriates, revolutionaries or ideologically driven volunteers. In other words, individuals with a cause, with strong commitments, and with a tightly focused personal agenda – during the Cold War that agenda was most often fueled by passionate anti-communism.
Those surrogates had a built-in drive for action and a strong sense of urgency. And from the very beginning, in Iraq, in Guatemala, and later in Cuba, that sense of urgency often led to requests from the surrogates themselves for the CIA to support them in political assassinations. In the earliest years, assassination was openly discussed even within the Agency (and in meetings with State Department officers).
I detail that in Shadow Warfare, in regard to Guatemala where even in the beginning no official directives for assassination were issued to field officers – even though training manuals on assassination were prepared and distributed, and appropriate weapons and training were supplied (threats of assassination even became part of the basic psychological warfare program).
Later the subject would become off limits for official meetings or memoranda, but the enablement continued – new versions of the training manuals would be prepared, and lists of “communists” to be “dealt with” (referred to as “blacklists”) would be built by CIA intelligence staff. That occurred not just in Guatemala, but in Indonesia, with regard to Cuba and on-wards.
Sharing such lists with surrogates was not considered a directive, simply support. Results were mixed, with the failure at the Bay of Pigs the blacklist for Cuba became moot, however an earlier list prepared for Indonesia lead to large scale massacres when an anti-communist military coup ravaged the islands.
The combination of passionate surrogates and “enablement” was exposed in the HSCA inquiry and best summarized by a particular incident in which a Cuban team on the island kept advising Miami Station of its preparations to assassinate Castro. When pressed on that point the Agency response was simply that they had not actually ordered them to do any such thing, it was their own idea. Miami Station had simply not told them not to do any such thing.
The bottom line was that the use of surrogates provided deniability for the CIA, but constantly exposed it to independent and officially unsanctioned actions. The second structural problem was that the surrogates could themselves be confused (or mislead) by what was officially being sanctioned (“green lighted”). Iin some instances that simply boiled down to their interpretation of what their case officer was telling them, or even what was implied in the weapons and support that they were given.
In more than once instance rifles and explosives used in assassinations were traced back to the CIA, yet when challenged the Agency would only admit to equipping its surrogates, but not to ordering an assassination. A prime example of that was the murder of General Schneider during the Chile effort against President Elect President Allende (Shadow Warfare pages 287, 313-314). If you have a copy of Shadow Warfare you can see how Case Officer Tony Sforza carried out that assignment using surrogates, and how the CIA ultimately implied that it was all a rogue action. Sforza himself was known to be willing to take early retirement to avoid giving testimony.
Other examples provide insight into how surrogates could be recruited (with promises of future support) – some sanctioned and others most definitely not. Dozens of Cuban exiles were recruited for military action in the Congo, over several years. They were promised that it was part of a grand anti-Communist effort, and that when it was done they would become part of a major new effort to overthrow the Castro regime – something which was never in the cards.
One of the more dramatic examples of false recruitment is found in the case of Rafael Quintero. Quintero had been active in the anti-Castro operations of the early 1960’s, a major figure in the AMWORLD project he had proposed assassinations of senior Castro regime figures. In later years he had been involved with current and former CIA officers in various activities, maintaining what he felt were trusted relationships.
Much later he would become a key figure in the Iran/Contra scandal. In the interim, circa 1976 Quintero was approached by a former CIA officer (JMWAVE) who recruited him for yet another assassination project. As it turned out, Quintero refused that action, but only based on the advice of still another CIA officer he had worked with earlier. (Shadow Warfare, 367-368).
The simple fact is that structurally surrogate operations allowed the CIA to conduct all its operations with deniability – but with risk of independent actions by both those same surrogates and field case officers who might well put their own personal agendas or career interests (the mission comes first) ahead of any specific directives or orders. The surrogates had their own causes and commitments, it was up to the field officers to enable them while controlling them – a constant challenge and for some a potential temptation.
