A Spy's Journey Read online

  I worked in a transit job for three months until the training started in earnest. I was sent to work in the Central Cover Staff (CCS), which turned out to have been a most interesting and useful pre-training assignment. I was allowed to actually take over several accounts and learned a great deal about the basics of setting up “cover,” the identity and occupation used by an agent or case officer to conceal his espionage or clandestine operational activities.1 I also acquired a lasting knowledge of the importance of individual cover in protecting both our officers and our operations. It was knowledge that was to serve me well throughout my career. It was also the assignment that brought me into direct contact with a man whom I and hundreds of other Agency employees regard as one of the true heroes of our generation, Richard L. Holm. He met disaster when he was involved in attempts to rescue hostages in the Congo.2 I was later given the task of helping set up the cover for one of his overseas assignments. Through this experience, I also discovered the lengths to which the Agency would go to assist its people and its families—one of the Agency’s great qualities. I then knew that should any of us have to risk our lives, the Agency and my colleagues would move heaven and earth to take care of our families and us.

  But, one of the more interesting CIA flaps occurred immediately upon my entry to the Agency. I had been through all of the processing when the Ramparts magazine flap occurred. This episode involved the disclosure on February 14, 1967 of the secret link between the CIA and the National Student Association (NSA). NSA was a democratic counterpart to the many Soviet-inspired student groups operating worldwide at that time. The CIA had funneled a subsidy of at least $3 million dollars to the NSA since 1952. By this time, NSA had chapters at over 300 U.S. universities. There was a huge uproar, and I got caught in the middle. There were two reasons for this: one, I had known the fellow who blew the news of the operation, because he was at the University of Oregon when I was there. Within days of my coming on board, I was called in repeatedly to tell what I knew about the person, whether I had any influence over him (no), and so on. But there was another reason. As the story unfolded, a young reporter at the Eugene Register-Guard broke a number of new revelations. His name was Lloyd Paseman—my twin brother! And, our office of security wanted to know if I knew what my brother knew. Of course I was not going to admit that I knew anything, and they finally gave up. But it was an eventful beginning.

  I also discovered early that working for the CIA has many strange aspects, many of which I’ll mention later in the book. Two of the early ones, however, involve contradictions between the CIA’s penchant for secrecy and some of the things they do. For example, the CIA runs a regular bus on many routes around Washington to get people where they need to go without the hassle of parking. However, they used Blue Bird buses—actually painted bright blue—to do this. Obviously, these buses stood out as CIA buses, and everyone around town knew what the buses were. However, when you got on the bus, you had to show a badge before the operator would tell you which bus covered which route. I never understood why they didn’t use a military-colored bus—and there were many around Washington—instead of the Blue Birds. They might as well have put a sign on them.

  The second thing I learned is that Agency folks stick together. There was a famous bar in downtown McLean called O’Toole’s that was the watering hole for the well initiated. If you went to O’Toole’s, you were immediately identified as being CIA. Half of the members who went there simply took their Agency badges and stuck them in their pockets. So you could tell all the CIA people by the chains around their necks leading to their shirt pockets.

  I then was given an operational assignment before beginning formal training. I consider myself fortunate to have been assigned to work in the Directorate of Operations, East Asia Division, where I became intimately familiar with the business of intelligence reporting. I worked for one of the sternest taskmasters in the business, but I acquired a knowledge of how requirements are generated, how to determine the value of intelligence, and how it gets to the consumer. For an entry-level officer, this was basic hard work without the thrills of the operational side. However, it left me with a lasting skill and appreciation for this side of the business. It also served me exceptionally well; from my first assignment on, I took exceptional pride in writing and composing all of my own intelligence reports into as close to a final product as possible. Consequently, I found that more of my intelligence was disseminated than that of my colleagues.

  Finally, my 100-plus classmates and I were drawn together and began our introductory training. It was a fun, fruitful time, and friends I made then are still colleagues and friends 30 years later. During these years, it was also Agency policy that incoming officers from the four Agency Directorates—Operations (the DO); Intelligence/Analysis (the DI); Administration (the DA); and Science and Technology (the DS&T)—enter into introductory training together. In that way, all would learn at least the basics of all four Directorates. It was excellent training, and included everything from basic intelligence writing and how aerial photography is done, to clandestine tradecraft (techniques of spying), logistics, and communications. Many of the officers who went into the non-operational directorates have remained my friends through the years and have provided me with great advice in their fields throughout my career.

  We also had outstanding instruction about our primary enemy—communism. We were instructed in communist theory—both Soviet and the Maoist. And we spent a lot of productive time studying and understanding covert action, which has been defined as “a clandestine operation designed to influence foreign governments, events, organizations, or persons in support of United States foreign policy; it may include political, economic, propaganda, or paramilitary activities.”3 We studied the history of the Agency, including lessons learned from both its successes and its failures.

  I finished in the top of my class in the operations portion of introductory training, confirming what I believed from the beginning, that I was best suited for clandestine activities and the Directorate of Operations—the DO or clandestine service, as it is also known. Before individual directorate training began, we were asked to state our preferences, which would then be used to find the perfect match with an advisor.

  A few words about my advisor are in order. He came from the administrative end of the house and appeared disinterested and lazy. Throughout the entire introductory training period, which lasted nearly three months, he talked to me personally only once, on the first day advisors were assigned. I put in to become a member of the DO. Given my performance in the introductory phase, I thought all was in order. To my horror, when assignments were announced I was informed that I was to go to the Directorate of Administration. I made an urgent appointment to see my advisor. I told him, quite honestly, that I did not intend to join the CIA to do administrative work. He said that he had decided that I would best fit in a support role. I pointed out that he had not discussed this with me, and told him frankly that I would fly back to California the next day rather than continue. So he took me to see his superior, and after a short session I was asked to wait outside. When they emerged after a few minutes, I was congratulated on my appointment to the Directorate of Operations (DO). I had learned a lesson that day—you must be your own personnel officer, and if you believe you are right, stick to your position.

  In September of that same year, operations training began in earnest at the legendary Camp Swampy secret training facility in the Virginia Tidewater region. My group was again over 100 strong, scheduled for traditional clandestine spy training and then paramilitary training. There was little doubt that the majority of the class was headed for Vietnam. Every one of my colleagues had been hired at a full grade higher than me—as GS-08s. I was more than a little aggravated and went to see my new advisor who told me that had I held out for a higher grade, they would have given it to me. Despite my protests they refused to increase my grade to that of most of my colleagues. In fact, it took me nearly four years to catch up to
the grades of my classmates. Again, you have to be your own personnel officer in the DO.

  I will not dwell on clandestine training here. Simply put, it was outstanding in comparison to any training I had received in the military or in private business. It was indeed Espionage 101, but it was intensive, and instruction came from people who were real experts in the craft. Long days and nights were the norm—just as in real life, where the preponderance of your duties takes place in the evenings or on weekends.

  I also learned in my early training the essentials of cover—that is, keeping the nature of your true affiliation secret. It works well—outside of Washington where anyone with a little knowledge of the CIA quickly sees through the flimsy cover mechanisms that have been set up for officially covered CIA officers entering duty.

  We also learned the tradecraft—secret writing, clandestine photography, how to select and use dead-drop sites, and how to recruit individuals for espionage against their own governments. In clandestine photo training, we learned to fashion and use concealment devices for cameras and how to take photos even while under observation. Several more enterprising individuals adapted their techniques by taking photos of their girlfriends in various stages of undress and making prints in the darkroom.

  And we got our first dose of the real characters that seem to gravitate to the clandestine service. One of my primary advisors was an old Near East hand—that is, an acknowledged expert in language, culture, and customs of the Near East. He had served under fire on occasion, and had seen the Agency pull out all the stops to bring proper medical care to his ailing wife. As a result, he was a dedicated, firm devotee of the CIA. He was also wilder than the proverbial March hare. One Thursday evening after we had been out late at night on a surveillance exercise, he suggested a late-night dinner at a restaurant 30 miles away. Several of us took him up on it, and he proceeded to consume a substantial number of martinis—and we did, too. Nonetheless, he drove us back. After we somehow made it back onto post, he told us he would show us some driving tips—and proceeded to drive up onto the lawn of the dormitory where we were staying, and did a number of large donuts on the lawn. We were mortified to be reprimanded the next day by the administrative officer of the base.

  We also spent a lot of time in the student recreation room—described well also in The Master of Disguise.4 We liked to relax, and relax hard. We conducted “carrier landings,” where we took a running dive at full speed along the length of a table, clearing all objects in our path. Also popular during paramilitary training were PLFs, “parachute landing falls,” where we leapt from a high object—normally the bar—and landed as if we had parachuted. Despite—or perhaps because of the amount of lubricants normally consumed in advance—no one was ever injured during my stay there. In short, it was a wild and woolly place at times, even though we all took our training very seriously.

  Although I had plenty of action-oriented training in the military, including substantial weapons work, the Agency’s paramilitary training was outstanding. Two great benefits of the paramilitary training are the camaraderie and learning who you can and cannot rely on in the group. Additionally, the stress of paramilitary training weeded out a number of people who simply were not cut out for the clandestine life. One such individual does bear mentioning, and to protect this officer’s identity, I’ll use one of his nicknames as a pseudonym. Due to his frequent ineptness, he was called “Gomer” after the lead character in the hit 1960s television comedy Gomer Pyle, starring Jim Nabors as the inept Marine recruit. Our Gomer carried impressive academic credentials—Phi Beta Kappa and a law degree. But he had no common sense. During our training, Gomer managed to alienate almost every instructor by picking up whatever weapon lay in front of him and attempting to disassemble it before class started. In one particular episode, Gomer was fiddling around with a Belgian FAL 7.62mm rifle, which was a favorite of our staff due to its near indestructibility and precision craftsmanship. Our instructors were fond of saying that the weapon was idiot-proof. However, Gomer managed to prove them wrong by launching the gas propellant spring clear across the room, to land neatly on the instructor’s desk at the beginning of class. The instructor, a retired master sergeant with multiple jumps in combat, asked Gomer about his parentage in no uncertain language. Later, as we began jungle training, we were taught the basics of rappelling with nothing but rope—no seats or attachments. At first, we worked from a high tower—probably 25 feet up in the air. Just as Gomer was straddling the rope to take his turn rappelling, I noticed that he was doing it in such a way that, when he took his first step off the tower, he would go down headfirst. I leaped to Gomer’s assistance, much to the disappointment of my classmates, who suggested that I had prevented true justice from being done.

  Imagine then my disgruntlement to find that Gomer would be right behind me in the “sticks” jumping out of the C-47 aircraft during parachute training. Nervous? You bet I was, especially since it was Gomer’s duty to hook me up before I jumped out of the aircraft. With what I knew about Gomer, I approached the jumpmaster and asked him to please check my connections after Gomer did and then right before I jumped out of the aircraft. Sure enough, Gomer had not fastened my connections correctly, and my chute would not have deployed properly without the intervention of the jumpmaster. After that, Gomer’s days were numbered, and he departed shortly thereafter without much fanfare.

  But romance was also on my mind during and after training. In the early part of training, I had met and courted a beautiful and vivacious young woman who was the sister of the woman one of my colleagues was dating. After my training was complete and I returned to the Washington, D.C., area, I proposed to her. To my great fortune, she accepted, and we were married on July 6, 1967. She has been by my side ever since and was a source of great strength during many harrowing moments over the next 35 years.

  After training, which took nearly one-and-a-half years, we were assigned out to area components. Given that the Vietnam War was underway, we knew that most of us would be assigned to Far East Division (FE)—at the time, along with Soviet European Division, the flagships of the Agency. Despite having been to Europe with the Army, I was pleased to be assigned to FE Division. It was indeed a large crowd, however. During an early session to discuss assignments, a man from Far East Division came in, talked a little about China, and noted that they were looking for people to study Chinese full-time for two years to become China specialists. When he asked for a show of hands of those interested, I noted no one raising their hand—most wanted to get right out to Vietnam where the action was. Frankly, I had no interest in serving in Vietnam. So I raised my hand and was selected for Chinese language training. I would spend the next two years fully engaged in learning that magnificent language, and become a China hand—an occupation that would consume my next 30 years.

  1. Leo D. Carl, The CIA Insider’s Dictionary of U.S. and Foreign Intelligence, Counterintelligence, and Tradecraft (Washington, D.C.: NIBC Press, 1996), p. 127.

  2. Richard L. Holm, Studies in Intelligence, Winter 1999–2000. A Close Call in Africa: Plane Crash, Rescue and Recovery, pp. 17–28.

  3. Carl, CIA Insider’s Dictionary, p. 129.

  4. Antonio J. Mendez, with Malcolm McConnell, The Master of Disguise: My Secret Life in the CIA (New York: William Morrow, 1999).

  THREE

  JUNGGWO HWA*—

  LEARNING CHINESE

  1969–1971

  I loved studying Chinese from the start. I was somewhat of a musician anyway, and I found a close tie between music and the tonal qualities of Chinese. As with espionage and paramilitary training, Agency language training was second to none. I began my study with only three students in the class, allowing for a great deal of individual attention and permitting no room for the unprepared to hide. The teaching staff of two females and one male was tremendous. Their primary role was to teach us the things, not from a textbook, that anyone who wished to be fluent should know. For instance, we learned the Chinese equivalent
to, “It’s better to fart and bear the shame than keep it in and bear the pain.” I also learned the real Chinese words for the various body parts—information of great importance when traveling in Asia.

  The fellow who ran the Chinese department was considerably interesting. Like many colleagues I would meet over the years, he was something else. He had a beard that looked like pork chops and a mustache—which led to the nickname “Weird Beard” in Chinese. (The Chinese are very fond of nicknames, normally calling attention to some defect or odd part of someone’s character—all done without conscious intent to harm.)

  One of the great ceremonies and important steps in starting out as a Chinese expert is acquiring a Chinese name—in Chinese, of course. Our male instructor was always assigned this task, and he would put great thought and effort into the process. In my case, he came up with “Pei Fulai” which means “Overflowing Happiness”—a great name, and one that all agreed fit my temperament. It also has a very rare Chinese character for the surname—also a plus when dealing with the Chinese.