C.I.A. learnt its 'dirty tricks’ from O.S.S.

Press, 14 August 1976, Page 6

C.I.A. learnt its ' dirty tricks’ from O.S.S.

By

JIM ANDERSON,

of

U.P.I. through NZPA Washington The American Central Ini telligence Agency inherited • its widely publicised sins i and transgressions directly ifrom its parent organisation, [ the wartime Organisation of (Strategic Services (0.5.5.). This is the opinion of Anthony Cave Brown, a former British journalist who is editing recently declassified Government documents covering the history of the 0.5.5., the United States intelligence agency of World War II which supplied the framework and much of the key manpower for the C.I.A. when it was formed in 1947. “Except 1 wouldn’t call them sins.” Brown says. “I would describe them as serious misdemeanours. I “They were inherent in i the 0.5.5., which was I formed in a period of total I war, when you were not l concerned with the niceties,” [he said. I “Later, during the Cold I War, the C.I.A. still considi ered itself in an ideological ■ war with the Communists, a war in which the blows (were muffled, but a war he said.

Brown said in an interview that the wartime O.S.S. infiltrated American labour organisations “with the blessing of the President of the United States,” and it was natural for the C.I.A. to continue such covert domestic activities. According to the once top secret documents obtained by Brown, infiltration Of labour groups proved useful in gathering information on movement of foreign ships and cargoes. Brown is working on a monumental history of the intelligence services during and after World War 11. He recently published another book titled “The Secret War Report of the 0.5.5.,” based on documents he obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. Brown said that the C.I.A. also inherited some of the O.S.S. traditions and folkways, especially the “old boy network” of ivy league officers with solid Establishment credentials — men like Allen Dulles, Kermit Roosevelt. Archibald MacLeish, David Bruce, Stewart Alsop, and Arthur Schlesinger, jun. The belief that “intelligence was a gentleman’s business,” Brown said, was a form of security protection.

There was a natural barrier between the circle of “old boys” who knew the secrets, and the rest of the world who had no need to know.

This philosophy took a near fatal blow, he said, when H. R. “Kim” Philby, a British intelligence officer with impeccable social and educational connections in Britain, was proved to be a Soviet agent. Brown says the network of ivy leaguers which formed the O.S.S. — and later the C.I.A. — had a set of common political beliefs which flavoured the work of both organisations. For example, he said, former C.LA. director, Allen Dulles, cultivated Right-wing organisations in Europe, including the Vatican. The theory was that the Vatican, which had most to lose by a Communist takeover in Europe, would co-operate with an anti-Communist intelligence agency such as the C.I.A.

It did occur during and after* the war, Brown said. The Vatican, which had its own network of intelligencegathering agents, supplied much valuable information to the O.S.S. and C.LA.

The ivy leaguers also brought with them a spirit

of derring-do which was responsible for some very valuable work on behalf of the Allied war effort.

“The Secret War Report of the 0.5.5.” describes how one group was secreted into northern Norway, where it blew up an 18ft railway bridge while under attack by German railroad guards, then blew up nearly two miles of railway track with 240 separate charges of plastic explosives. The leader of that group was Major William Colby, later chief of covert operations in South Vietnam and then C.I.A. director who was fired by President Ford in the “Halloween week-end massacre” of 1975. The derring-do occasionally went too far, according to the O.S.S. history. In one incident, some over-zealous O.S.S. men broke into the Japanese Embassy in Lisbon during World War II and stole a code book. The O.S.S. agents did not know the Allies already had broken the code and were regularly reading all Japanese radio transmissions.

To the anguish of the Allied leadership, the Japanese changed their code as a re«

suit of the burglary, but American cryptanalysts soon were able to break the new one.

Brown said that most of the O.S.S. traditional intelligence gathering actually was an elaborate cover to disguise the fact the Allies were getting the same intelligence much faster and cheaper by code-breaking operations such as the recently revealed "Ultra” system. Brown says that the C.LA., for all its faults, became the most formidable intelligence organisation in the world, and was more than a match for the Russians or the British. He fears, however, that recent revelations by Senator Frank Church’s Senate select committee on intelligence will weaken the C.I.A. for years to come. “Many agents, especially in Eastern Europe, are reluctant to work for an agency which might collapse or be 'folded,” Brown said, i “In order to be effective, an intelligence service must be secret. The fabric of the first line of defence of this country is badly damaged, as a result of the Senate revelations,” he said.