17
Wednesday, September 6, 1962
Dear Kittredge,
Were you in Maine for the latter part of August? I took my two weeks through Labor Day, the most I’ve had since the spring of ’60 when I climbed Katahdin in the last of the May snows. This year I made the mistake of spending my time (free room and board) with my mother in Southampton, and almost got married. ( Joke, darling, an absolute joke.) In truth, I don’t know who was after me most, the single girls to whom my mother had sung my praises, or her younger married friends, but I was ready to throttle the lady responsible for my existence since I do not think there is anyone in Southampton who does not know by now that I am an Agency hand. It was revolting, or would have been if the sexual emoluments had not been so attendant on the knowledge. God, we in the Agency are bum-rated all over the world as evil and sinister manipulators of downtrodden nations, etc., etc., but don’t those summer lasses make a beeline for a man just because he is not totally unpresentable and, haven’t you heard, is, yes, so bad, a CIA man. I realized in two fast weeks that I did not need to worry about the interest and principal on my own funds anymore. My mother is richer than she will admit and, no matter what, is bound to drop some capital on my head; besides, I have at least ten good years in which to marry one or another medium-bracket heiress. I could have gotten betrothed to some real mazuma in these couple of weeks if I had had any inclinations in such direction, yet discovered to my surprise that I despise most rich people. They—I have, in my innocence, just come to learn—are narcissistic beyond measure. Me and my money seems to be the sum of their inner relations. Alpha and Omega, take your pick! Worse! Wealthy narcissists lack that which other narcissists provide, a bit of charm. What an irony! I am defending the West in order to protect the Wall Street–garnered gains of these Southampton splendidos. I may need a refresher course in the evils of Bolshevism mit materialism. Encore, je blague.
The truth is that I enjoyed my vacation, am delighted to be back, and am warmed up to tell you about a pitched battle in early August between Harvey and Lansdale that was waged entirely with memos. In fact, I thought about it more than once during vacation, for it was bizarre in its origins, and classic in the outcome.
Picture one more meeting of the Special Group, Augmented. It is a large enough gathering on this occasion to include myself again. Needless to say, some true bureaucratic bottoms are in the room—General Maxwell Taylor, General Lemnitzer, Robert McNamara.
I am once again a flunky outrider. I sit with my two legal attaché cases behind my principal, William King Harvey (who is representing McCone), and the meeting, again bereft of Bobby Kennedy, drones on over Mongoose. The principals, relieved of Bobby’s whip-it-up intensity, are only present in formal fashion. (The main passion on this August afternoon is not to fall asleep.) We have been through too many reports concerning progress gained here and progress ongoing there, with not a damn thing to tell us whether the middle or end of Mongoose is anywhere in sight.
Harvey, for example, offers a synopsis of one of our sabotage jobs that worked nicely. Earlier in the month, a Cuban freighter called the SS Streatham Hill, en route to the Soviet Union with a cargo of 800,000 bags of Cuban sugar, was obliged to put into San Juan, Puerto Rico, for repairs. Harvey said in his low voice, “I don’t know why the Cubans can’t keep their engine bearings free of sand,” an in-line SGA joke—yet, given the somnolence of the late afternoon, only a few smiles were cracked. During the enforced layover, some of our Puerto Rican contract agents succeeded in impregnating the cargo with a nonpoisonous substance called bitrex, “suitably named,” said Harvey, “because it converts a sweet taste to a bitter one. The Russians will receive 800,000 bags of unusable sugar.”
Lansdale made the mistake of asking, “How did our people succeed in infiltrating bitrex into each of those 800,000 bags?”
“The bags are not to be taken literally as the packaging modality,” said Harvey most patiently, “but as a unit of quantity. The sugar is carried loose in the hold compartments. Figure on about 10,000 tons of sugar impregnated with bitrex.”
Robert McNamara, who had been silent until now, started to speak. It was obvious he had been listening to neither man. McNamara is a most solemn potentate from the ramparts of Defense, but as I receive it, the Washington establishment’s verdict—at least as it gets down to me—is that he, of all Cabinet officers, is the most brilliant and purposive. All the bureaucratic virtues surround his name. I suppose that has to be true, but at SGA meetings he is a bore. Maybe he was distracted that day. He was certainly ruminating aloud in bureaucratese, and had succeeded in leading us to the land of border somnolence. I snapped alert in the middle, however. Awash on his lusterless recapitulation of our Mongoose endeavors, I thought I heard him propose the elimination of Fidel Castro! Then, I could hardly decide from what he said next whether he had or hadn’t: “While not in the least in favor of projecting this alternative option into Mongoose capability-potential, I can see, nonetheless, a viable skew in the end-result, which, speaking strictly from a theoretical point of view, might present us with a major shift in the regnant Cuban political situation. On the other hand, techniques for subterranean expression of the alternative just cited may be insufficiently developed . . .”
Kittredge, I remember telling myself, “He can’t possibly be saying what I think he is,” and everyone else, of course, is agog. What did he mean? Is he going on about assassination? No one responded.
The meeting ended on schedule. Everyone left. I was certain that McNamara’s speech was not going to reach the minutes. A few days later, however, on August 13, a memo came in from Lansdale summarizing the “emergent directives” at the last discussion in Special Group, Augmented. Lansdale listed: economic sabotage, paramilitary action, intelligence activities, and political activities. To this last, he added, “liquidation of leaders.”
Since Lansdale had also sent the memo to SGA people at State, Defense, and the USIA, Harvey was apoplectic. “Just let his memo leak out, and some congressional committee will start delving into who is developing executive-action capability. That’s when Bill Harvey will be requested to put his ass in a paper-shredder.”
Harvey fired off a memo to Helms: “I have called General Lansdale’s office and pointed out the inadvisability and stupidity of putting this kind of comment in writing in such a document.”
You may be certain, Kittredge, that Helms passed it on to McCone who queried Lansdale. As I heard it back via Harvey, Lansdale answered, “Well, sir, I had my considerable doubts as to the utility of the suggestion, but I was trying to be comprehensive. In contingency planning, you do want to cover the waterfront.”
It sounds exactly like Lansdale. McCone has now told Harvey that McNamara’s remarks were inappropriate. “Why, if I ever got myself involved,” McCone said, “in something like this, I might end up getting excommunicated.” As a recent Catholic convert, he does think of such things.
Ergo, McCone has moved in on Lansdale. The wings are clipped. Instead of proceeding to “Phase Two: the inspiring of revolt,” McCone proposes that Lansdale “seek a split between Castro and the old-line Communists. This is sensible action and attainable.”
I do not know if Lansdale is aware of how much he has lost.
It is good to be writing to you. Perhaps this year we can share a Christmas punch.
Love,
Harry