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---
created: 2026-05-15
updated: 2026-05-15
updated: 2026-10-14
title: Edward Lansdale
aliases:
- Edward Geary Lansdale
- Edward G. Lansdale
- Edward Lansdale
- Ed Lansdale
- E. G. Lansdale
- Lansdale
tags:
- Person
- CIA
@ -11,51 +16,249 @@ tags:
- Philippines
- Vietnam
- AntiCastro
- OSS
- Counterinsurgency
- OperationMongoose
- SaigonMilitaryMission
- Huk
- ChurchCommittee
- Assassination
category: "Intelligence & Government"
summary: "Major General Edward Lansdale was the U.S. Air Force's preeminent counterinsurgency theorist, credited with suppressing the Huk insurgency in the Philippines by backing Ramon Magsaysay (1950-1953), advising Ngo Dinh Diem in Vietnam (1954-1956), and directing Operation Mongoose against Castro (1961-1962) under Robert Kennedy's oversight, becoming the partial model for the protagonists in both The Quiet American and The Ugly American."
summary: "Edward Lansdale was an Air Force officer whose Philippine counterinsurgency work, Saigon mission and Operation Mongoose role made him a central figure in covert action against Vietnam and Cuba."
born: 1908-02-06
died: 1987-02-23
location: "Washington, D.C."
relations:
- type: employed_by
with: "[[Office of Strategic Services]]"
role: "intelligence officer"
start: 1942
end: 1945
fn: 2
- type: employed_by
with: "[[United States Air Force]]"
role: "officer"
start: 1947
end: 1963-10-31
fn: 2
- type: partner_of
with: "[[Ramon Magsaysay]]"
role: "U.S. adviser to the Philippine defense secretary and later president"
start: 1950
end: 1953
fn: 4
- type: head_of
with: "[[Saigon Military Mission]]"
role: "chief"
start: 1954-06-01
end: 1956
fn: 7
- type: partner_of
with: "[[Ngo Dinh Diem]]"
role: "U.S. adviser to Diem"
start: 1954
end: 1956
fn: 15
- type: reported_to
with: "[[Robert Kennedy]]"
role: "wrote to the Attorney General on the Cuba project"
start: 1961-11-30
fn: 27
- type: head_of
with: "[[Operation Mongoose]]"
role: "chief of operations"
start: 1961-11-30
end: 1962-11
fn: 28
- type: reported_to
with: "[[Maxwell Taylor]]"
role: "Special Group (Augmented) chairman"
start: 1961-11-30
end: 1962-11
fn: 29
- type: reported_to
with: "[[William Harvey]]"
reverse: true
role: "CIA project officer for Operation Mongoose"
start: 1962
end: 1962
fn: 30
- type: participant_in
with: "[[Operation NORTHWOODS]]"
role: "requested pretexts for military intervention through the Mongoose interagency group"
start: 1962-03-06
end: 1962-03-13
fn: 44
- type: investigated
with: "[[Church Committee]]"
reverse: true
fn: 29
- type: reported_to
with: "[[Ellsworth Bunker]]"
role: "assistant to the ambassador, U.S. Mission to South Vietnam"
start: 1967
end: 1968
fn: 2
- type: appointed
with: "[[Henry Cabot Lodge]]"
reverse: true
role: "special assistant to the ambassador, later senior liaison officer"
start: 1965-08
end: 1968
fn: 55
---
Edward Geary Lansdale (February 6, 1908 - February 23, 1987) was a [[United States Air Force]] officer and intelligence operative who shaped American counterinsurgency doctrine through practical success in the [[Philippines]] and controversial engagement in [[Vietnam|South Vietnam]], and who directed [[Operation Mongoose]] - the Kennedy administration's post-[[Bay of Pigs]] program to overthrow [[Fidel Castro]] - until its suspension following the [[Cuban Missile Crisis]].[^1]
Edward Geary Lansdale (1908-1987) was an [[United States Air Force]] officer and intelligence operative whose counterinsurgency work in the [[Philippines]] and [[Vietnam]] shaped American counterinsurgency doctrine, and who served as chief of operations of [[Operation Mongoose]], the Kennedy administration's covert program against [[Fidel Castro]], from November 1961 until the program was suspended after the [[Cuban Missile Crisis]].[^1]
### Philippines and Counterinsurgency Doctrine
### Early career
Lansdale arrived in the Philippines in 1950 as an Air Force officer attached to the [[Central Intelligence Agency|CIA]] during the Huk insurgency - an armed communist-led peasant rebellion (Hukbalahap) that threatened the Manila government. Working closely with [[Ramon Magsaysay]], first as Defense Secretary and then as President, Lansdale developed an approach to counterinsurgency that emphasized political reform over military force: redressing peasant grievances, creating a professional and non-corrupt military, civic action programs, and psychological operations rather than indiscriminate repression.
Lansdale was born in Detroit on February 6, 1908. He served with the [[Office of Strategic Services]] from 1942 to 1945, was promoted to lieutenant in the U.S. Army in 1943, and served in military intelligence for the duration of the war.[^2] From 1945 to 1948 he was chief of an intelligence division and extended his stay in the Philippines at AFWESPAC and PHILRYCOM, where he helped the Philippine Army rebuild its intelligence services. He was commissioned a captain in the Air Force in 1947 with the temporary rank of major, taught at the Strategic Intelligence School at Lowry Air Force Base, Colorado, in 1948, and received a temporary promotion to lieutenant colonel in 1949.[^2]
The Huk insurgency was effectively ended by 1953. American policy circles attributed this success to Lansdale's methods, and Magsaysay's election as President in 1953 (which Lansdale helped engineer) was seen as validating the approach: a popular anti-communist leader defeating both insurgency and corruption simultaneously.
[[Fletcher Prouty|L. Fletcher Prouty]] wrote in 1992 that Lansdale entered the OSS soon after the attack on Pearl Harbor and later said that he had left it to serve in army intelligence, and that in November 1949 Lansdale was brought into the [[Office of Policy Coordination]], the covert action office directed by [[Frank Wisner]], who had headed the OSS section in Romania during the war. Prouty wrote that Lansdale worked there under Col. [[Richard G. Stilwell]] in the planning staff of the Far East division.[^3]
This Philippine model - counterinsurgency as political as much as military work - became the basis for American counterinsurgency doctrine and for Lansdale's subsequent assignments.[^1]
### Philippines, 1950 to 1953
### Vietnam: Saigon Military Mission
Lansdale arrived in the Philippines in 1950 as an Air Force officer attached to the [[Central Intelligence Agency|CIA]] during the [[Hukbalahap|Huk]] insurgency, an armed communist-led peasant rebellion that threatened the Manila government.[^1] His transfer to the [[Joint United States Military Advisory Group]] came at the request of President [[Elpidio Quirino]], to advise the Philippine Army's intelligence services in the campaign against the Huks, and he received a temporary promotion to colonel in 1951.[^2] The Army's history of the campaign places Lansdale's first meeting with [[Ramon Magsaysay]] at a reception at Fort Myer, where Magsaysay had just been named Philippine defense secretary. The study says that Magsaysay then asked President Quirino to request Lansdale's assignment to JUSMAG, and that Lansdale arrived with his assistant, Maj. [[Charles T. R. Bohannan]].[^4]
Lansdale arrived in Saigon in June 1954, days before the Geneva Accords ended the First Indochina War. He headed the Saigon Military Mission (SMM), a covert operation tasked with building support for the anti-communist government of [[Ngo Dinh Diem]] and undermining the communist North Vietnamese government.
Working with Magsaysay, Lansdale developed an approach to counterinsurgency that emphasized political reform over military force: redressing peasant grievances, creating a professional and less corrupt military, civic action programs, and psychological operations rather than indiscriminate repression.[^1] The Huk insurgency was effectively ended by 1953. Magsaysay's election as president in 1953, which Lansdale helped engineer, was seen at the time as validating the approach: a popular anti-communist leader defeating insurgency and corruption at once.[^1] The approach became the basis for American counterinsurgency doctrine and for Lansdale's later assignments.[^1]
The SMM conducted psychological operations and sabotage in North Vietnam, helped orchestrate the movement of approximately 900,000 Catholic Vietnamese from North to South following partition, and worked to stabilize Diem's government against internal challenges from the Binh Xuyen criminal organization and dissident military factions. Lansdale developed a personal relationship with Diem and provided the political counsel that helped Diem survive the turbulent 1954-1956 period.
The Army's study describes the psychological warfare that ran alongside the patrols. Scout-Ranger units distributed propaganda leaflets covertly in areas the guerrillas considered secure, and the most successful was called "The Eye," which left each finder uncertain how far his territory had been penetrated. The study also describes altered cartridges, with dynamite in place of powder, planted in Huk weapon caches, so that a guerrilla could not tell whether his supply had been tampered with by a government agent.[^5] In his memoir Lansdale wrote that one combat psywar squad planted stories among the residents of a town of an asuang, a vampire, living on the hill where the Huks were based, then ambushed a Huk patrol, snatched its last man and "punctured his neck with two holes, vampire-fashion." He described a second technique, the "eye of God," which he had heard of from the siege of Caen and from spotter-aircraft and loudspeaker-tank teams in Europe during World War II: exact intelligence on individual enemy soldiers was broadcast by loudspeaker so that each "couldn't hide from an all-seeing eye."[^6]
Graham Greene's novel *The Quiet American* (1955) drew partially on Lansdale's activities and persona in Vietnam, though Greene's portrayal was decidedly unflattering. William Lederer and Eugene Burdick's *The Ugly American* (1958) featured Colonel Edwin Hillandale, a more sympathetic character clearly modeled on Lansdale.[^1]
### Saigon Military Mission, 1954 to 1956
Lansdale returned to Vietnam for a second tour in 1965-1968 in a senior advisory capacity under Ambassador [[Henry Cabot Lodge]], but with far less operational authority than his earlier mission. He was recalled in 1968 without having achieved the political reform he believed essential to South Vietnam's survival.
In 1953 Lansdale was a member of Lt. Gen. [[John W. O'Daniel]]'s mission to the French forces in Indochina, as an adviser on special counter-guerrilla operations.[^2] He arrived in Saigon on June 1, 1954, about seven weeks before the Geneva Agreements of July 21, 1954 ended the [[First Indochina War]]. He headed the [[Saigon Military Mission]] (SMM), an American team that the mission's own report says was born at a Washington policy meeting early in 1954.[^7] The report gives the team's broad mission as paramilitary operations against the enemy and political-psychological warfare.[^8] O'Daniel and the embassy chargé [[Robert McClintock]] had arranged Lansdale's appointment as assistant air attaché, and secret communications with Washington ran through the Saigon station of the CIA.[^9]
### Operation Mongoose
The report, which the [[Pentagon Papers]] reprinted as Document 95, describes a black propaganda strike that the team engineered in Hanoi before the [[Viet Minh]] took the city: leaflets signed by the Viet Minh gave residents instructions for the takeover, including items on property and money. A later leaflet, attributed to the Viet Minh Resistance Committee, was prepared for the transport of southern Viet Minh to the North under the Geneva agreement. The report also records that the idea for [[Operation Brotherhood]], a program of volunteer medical teams for South Vietnam, was born at an SMM conference in 1954, and that the chief suggested [[Donald R. Heath|Ambassador Heath]] call a U.S. meeting to plan a single Vietnamese refugee agency under a commissioner appointed by Diem.[^10]
After the Bay of Pigs disaster in April 1961, the Kennedy administration created Operation Mongoose to renew efforts against Castro through covert means. Attorney General [[Robert Kennedy]] chaired the [[Special Group]] (Augmented) overseeing the program; Lansdale was appointed its operational director in November 1961.
The report records that [[Ngo Dinh Diem|Diem]] arrived in Saigon on July 7, 1954, and that Diem made an agreement with General [[Trinh Minh The]], leader of some 3,000 [[Cao Dai]] dissidents near Tay Ninh, to give him financial support in return for armed support to the government if needed.[^10] Some 900,000 civilians exercised their option under Article 14(d) of the armistice to move from the North to the South, among them more than 600,000 Catholics, an estimated 65 percent of North Vietnam's Catholics.[^11] The northern team under Maj. [[Lucien Conein]] supervised the refugee flow for the Hanoi airlift organized by the French as part of its cover duties.[^12] In September 1954 the team attempted to destroy the modern presses of the largest printing establishment in the north, which intended to remain in Hanoi and do business with the Viet Minh; Viet Minh security agents had already moved into the plant.[^13] In its last days in Hanoi, before the city was evacuated on October 9, 1954, the team contaminated the oil supply of the bus company for a gradual wreckage of engines and took the first actions for delayed sabotage of the railroad, working with a CIA special technical team in Japan.[^14] Lansdale developed a personal relationship with Diem and provided the political counsel that helped Diem survive the turbulent 1954 to 1956 period.[^1] The team also worked to stabilize Diem's government against challenges from the Binh Xuyen criminal organization and dissident military factions. The Pentagon's study says that in 1955 and 1956 Lansdale "was a key figure in installing and establishing Diem as President of South Vietnam."[^15]
Mongoose was the largest CIA covert action program since the Korean War. At its peak, the CIA's [[JM-WAVE|JM/WAVE]] station in Miami employed over 400 officers and had more than 3,000 Cuban exile agents on its payroll. Operations targeted Cuban economic infrastructure (sabotage), developed internal resistance networks, and maintained assassination planning tracks through [[William Harvey]]'s [[ZR RIFLE|ZR/RIFLE]] program.
The report describes the mission's part in the dispute between Diem and the army chief of staff, General [[Nguyen Van Hinh]], who had selected October 26, 1954 for an attack on the presidential palace. The mission invited two of Hinh's officers to the Philippines on the pretext of an official trip, and the report states that the attack did not take place. Ambassador [[J. Lawton Collins]], who arrived on November 8, applied pressure on Hinh, and Hinh left for Paris on November 29.[^16] In the Philippines the mission built up Freedom Company, a non-profit Philippine corporation backed by President Magsaysay to supply Filipinos experienced in fighting the Huks, and the United States backed a small Freedom Company training camp in a hidden valley on the Clark Air Base reservation.[^17] In January 1955 the mission borrowed Magsaysay's senior aide, Col. [[Napoleon Valeriano]], to reorganize the Presidential Guard Battalion for Diem.[^18]
Lansdale's relationship with Harvey was persistently antagonistic. Harvey believed Mongoose's operational security was compromised by Robert Kennedy's direct involvement; Lansdale regarded Harvey's insubordination and alcoholism as operational liabilities. Harvey unilaterally dispatched teams into Cuba during the October 1962 missile crisis, directly violating administration policy, leading to his transfer to Rome. Mongoose was effectively suspended during the missile crisis and formally reduced in scope thereafter.[^2]
The report also describes an almanac for popular sale in the northern cities, for which Vietnamese astrologers were hired to write predictions of disasters for certain Viet Minh leaders and undertakings and of unity in the south, work the report says was "based on our concept of the use of astrology for psywar in Southeast Asia." Copies were shipped by air to Haiphong and smuggled into Viet Minh territory.[^18] On January 11, 1955 Collins announced Lansdale's transfer from the ambassador's staff to the Training Relations and Instruction Mission under O'Daniel, to head its National Security division, with authority to coordinate all U.S. agencies in Vietnam in that work.[^18]
### Legacy
[[Graham Greene]]'s novel [[The Quiet American]] (1955) drew partly on Lansdale's activities and persona in Vietnam, and Greene's portrayal is decidedly unflattering.[^19] [[William Lederer]] and [[Eugene Burdick]]'s [[The Ugly American]] (1958) featured Colonel Edwin Hillandale, a more sympathetic character. [[Mary McGrory]] wrote in a [[Washington Star]] article on Lodge's second Saigon mission that Lansdale was widely regarded as the prototype of the harmonica-playing Colonel Hillandale of that novel.[^20]
Lansdale represented a specific strand of Cold War American engagement with the Third World: the belief that communist insurgencies could be countered by winning popular support rather than by military force alone, and that American counterinsurgency advisors could translate this theory into practice in specific contexts. His Philippine success was real; his Vietnam engagement contributed to a trajectory that ended in American defeat.
### Diem and the Pentagon, 1955 to 1961
His operational career raised questions that remained relevant through later U.S. counterinsurgency experiences: whether the Philippine model was transferable to different political cultures, whether American advisors could substitute for indigenous political leadership, and whether covert operations could produce durable political outcomes.
Lansdale went to the office of the Secretary of Defense in Washington in 1957 as deputy assistant secretary for special operations, served on the staff of the President's Committee on Military Assistance (the Draper Committee) in 1959, and received a temporary promotion to brigadier general in 1960.[^2] In 1961 he held special operations posts in the Office of the Secretary of Defense. A letter of January 30, 1961 styles him the deputy assistant for special operations, and a memorandum of June 26, 1961 styles him the assistant for special operations.[^21][^22] The Defense Department's Vietnam study identifies him as Brigadier General Edward G. Lansdale of the [[Office of Special Operations]] in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, abbreviated OSO/OSD.[^23]
Lansdale died in Washington on February 23, 1987.[^1]
Lansdale's January 1961 report on Vietnam, submitted after a visit to Saigon, argued that the United States had to keep supporting Diem, and the Defense Department study notes that memoirs by [[Arthur Schlesinger Jr.|Arthur Schlesinger]] and [[Roger Hilsman]] describe the report as shocking the president about conditions in Vietnam.[^23] A letter Lansdale wrote to Diem on January 30, 1961 is in the Lansdale Papers at the [[Hoover Institution]].[^21]
The Defense study says Lansdale served as executive officer of the task force that [[Roswell Gilpatric]] organized to review Vietnam, and that he proposed the task force be given a continuing, dominant role in managing the Vietnamese enterprise.[^23] In October 1961 he met [[Ngo Dinh Nhu]] in Saigon and reported the conversation to [[Maxwell Taylor]], the president's military representative.[^24]
### Operation Mongoose, 1961 to 1962
After the [[Bay of Pigs]] invasion of April 1961, the Kennedy administration renewed covert efforts against Castro. At a White House meeting on November 3, 1961 President [[John F. Kennedy]] authorized a new program. [[Robert Kennedy]]'s handwritten notes of the meeting list "Lansdale (the Ugly American)" among those present, record that Robert Kennedy assigned Lansdale to survey the situation in Cuba, and describe the aim of stirring things up on the island with espionage, sabotage and general disorder, run by Cubans themselves.[^25]
On November 28, 1961 Lansdale wrote to Gen. [[Samuel T. Williams]] that a "crash project" from his superior had taken him away from the follow-through on the Taylor group's reports. The published volume identifies the project as a Cuba effort that Attorney General Kennedy had asked him to take up.[^26] On November 30, 1961 he sent Robert Kennedy a memorandum on the "day of decision" for the project, arguing that the intelligence estimate circulated against it was inadequate on the internal situation.[^27] A later program review states that the November 30 directive set the goal of the program and named Lansdale as chief of operations, with operational lieutenants from [[Department of State|State]], Defense and the CIA.[^28]
The [[Church Committee]] records that Kennedy appointed General Maxwell Taylor chairman of the [[Special Group (Augmented)]], and that Robert Kennedy played an active role in the program, a role unrelated to his position as attorney general.[^29] Lansdale was designated chief of operations. The committee also records that [[William Harvey]] was put in charge of the CIA's [[Task Force W]] in late 1961 or early 1962, a unit that employed approximately 400 people at CIA headquarters and its Miami station.[^29] Harvey's memorandum to Lansdale of July 24, 1962 stated that as of July 23, 477 CIA staff personnel were devoting full time to the effort.[^30]
Lansdale's review of the first phase, dated July 25, 1962, reported that recruitment of third-country nationals and the start of Cuban collection nets had made Operation Mongoose "numerically the largest U.S. intelligence agent effort inside a Communist state."[^31] Taylor's memorandum to the president of August 17, 1962 described the program as generating the largest intelligence effort directed at any Soviet Bloc country.[^32] Sabotage was part of the plan. On October 8, 1962 Harvey asked Lansdale to put before the Special Group a request for policy approval to sabotage Cuban-owned vessels "wherever and whenever secure access to them can be attained," normally in non-Bloc ports.[^33] Operations targeted Cuban economic infrastructure through sabotage, developed internal resistance networks, and maintained assassination planning tracks through Harvey's [[ZR RIFLE|ZR/RIFLE]] program.[^34] At its peak the [[JM-WAVE]] station in Miami had more than 3,000 Cuban exile agents on its payroll. Lansdale's relationship with Harvey was persistently antagonistic. Harvey believed that Robert Kennedy's direct involvement compromised the operation's security, and Lansdale regarded Harvey's insubordination and alcoholism as operational liabilities.[^34] Mongoose was the largest CIA covert action program since the Korean War.
Planning tasks were set in January 1962. On January 18 Lansdale assigned 32 tasks to the participating agencies.[^35] In a memorandum of January 20 to the members of the Caribbean Survey Group he wrote that "we are in a combat situation" in which "we have been given full command."[^36] On January 19 he added Task 33, a plan to incapacitate Cuban sugar workers during the harvest by chemical means. Lansdale testified that the agents were nonlethal and meant to keep workers away from the fields for 24 to 48 hours. The task was approved for planning with a notation that it required a policy determination, and after a study showed it unfeasible it was cancelled without reaching the Special Group.[^37] A January 26 memorandum asked State and Defense for an early determination of when the United States might use military force in the Cuba project.[^38]
The committee describes Lansdale's six-phase schedule as one that the Special Group did not approve for implementation, and reports that only its first, intelligence-collection phase was approved for January through August 1962. The March 14, 1962 guidelines stated that "During this period, General Lansdale will continue as Chief of Operations, calling directly on the participating departments and agencies for support and implementation of agreed tasks."[^39]
Parrott, an assistant to the president's military representative, testified before the Church Committee in 1975 about a plan for removing Castro that he attributed to Lansdale. In Parrott's account, the plan consisted of spreading word that the Second Coming of Christ was imminent and that Christ was against Castro, with an American submarine to surface off Cuba and send up starshells as the sign. Parrott said that somebody dubbed the plan "Elimination by Illumination."[^40][^41]
Lansdale testified in 1975 that "touchdown play," a phrase in his memoranda, was a breezy way of referring to a Cuban revolt to overthrow the regime, and the committee reports that the examples in his January 1962 memorandum contained no indication of assassination.[^37]
On February 20, 1962 Lansdale detailed a six-phase schedule designed to culminate in October 1962 with "open revolt and overthrow of the Communist regime." For its "Resistance" phase he listed "attacks on the cadre of the regime, including key leaders," with the notation that "Gangster elements might provide the best recruitment potential for actions against police G-2 officials" and that chemical warfare agents should be fully considered. Lansdale testified that the "actions" and "attack" in that component meant killing. He testified that early in the program he had suggested to working-level representatives of the participating agencies that they contact "criminal elements" for intelligence and for "possible actions against the police structure" in Cuba, and he conceded that his proposal to recruit gangster elements for attacks on "key leaders" contemplated the targeted killing of individuals.[^42] On January 30, 1962 Craig forwarded to Lansdale a concept called Operation Bounty, a system of financial rewards for killing or delivering alive known Communists, with leaflets listing rewards from $5,000 for an informer to $100,000 for government officials and a reward of 2 cents for Castro. Lansdale testified that the figure was designed to denigrate Castro and that he tabled the concept, which he never brought before the Special Group (Augmented).[^43]
### Operation NORTHWOODS and the pretexts question
At a March 5, 1962 meeting chaired by Secretary of State [[Dean Rusk]], Rusk spoke of "other tracks" which might be opened for the United States to achieve its objective, and there was joking reference to a "Bay of Pigs" in, perhaps, Guatemala, as a notional clandestine action for which "they" could be blamed. On March 6, 1962 Lansdale wrote to [[Richard Goodwin]], the deputy assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs, that General Taylor had asked him to report on these alternate "tracks" to the Special Group he chaired. He was asking the Defense representative, [[William H. Craig]], for "a brief but precise description of pretexts which the JCS believes desirable if a decision is ultimately made to use direct military intervention," and he asked State for a companion statement.[^44] A [[Joint Chiefs of Staff]] memorandum of March 13, 1962, "Justification for US Military Intervention in Cuba," answered with a set of pretexts for military action. That plan is known as [[Operation NORTHWOODS]].[^45]
### Castro assassination questions, 1975
Lansdale's own account of assassination planning appeared in an [[Associated Press]] interview published by [[The Washington Post]] on May 1, 1975. He said that, acting on orders delivered through an intermediary, he developed plans for removing Castro by any means, including assassination, and that he was assigned to the project in 1962, when the United States first received intelligence that Castro was prepared to install Soviet-made missiles in Cuba.[^46] He declined to name the intermediary and said it was not [[McGeorge Bundy]] but someone "much more intimate."[^46] Of the project he said, "I just wanted to see if the United States had any such capabilities," and he said he was "working for the highest authority in the land." [[Robert McNamara]] objected to the description of Lansdale as his assistant in August 1962, saying "I had no personal knowledge of what he was doing."[^46]
The Associated Press identified Lansdale as the author of an August 1962 memorandum, then in the possession of the [[Rockefeller Commission 1975|Rockefeller Commission]], which authoritative sources said gave the CIA authority to develop contingency plans for the assassination of Castro. Lansdale said he did not remember the memorandum but acknowledged that it would not have been incompatible with his assigned task. He confirmed that the phrase "something like that," used in describing the project, included the possibility of assassination.[^46]
The August 13, 1962 memorandum that the Church Committee quotes directed Harvey to include an option for the "liquidation of leaders" in a proposed Phase II plan. Harvey's memorandum of August 14 to [[Richard Helms]] attached Lansdale's memorandum with the words excised.[^47] On August 6, 1962 Lansdale had reviewed Harvey's draft operational plan.[^48] The Special Group met on August 16, 1962 and approved Lansdale's paper subject to detailed actions, and [[John McCone]]'s record of the meeting notes a difference between Lansdale and the CIA over the position McCone had taken on the plan.[^49]
### The missile crisis and the end of the program
Harvey testified before the committee that during the October 1962 crisis he ordered agent teams into Cuba to support any conventional U.S. military operation, that Robert Kennedy "took a great deal of exception" to the order, and that McCone ordered the agent operations stopped. On October 30, 1962 the Special Group ordered a halt to all sabotage operations, citing Lansdale's memorandum for the record.[^50] The committee's chronology records that Operation Mongoose ended in November 1962.[^51] The program was formally reduced in scope after the crisis.
Harvey was appointed chief of the CIA station in Rome, effective on or about June 30, 1963.[^52] [[Evan Thomas|Thomas]] wrote that Robert Kennedy had exiled Harvey to Rome.[^53] Lansdale retired from the Air Force on October 31, 1963, was awarded a second Distinguished Service Medal for his counterinsurgency work, and became a consultant to the director of Food for Peace at the White House.[^2]
### Return to Vietnam, 1965 to 1968
Lansdale returned to Vietnam in 1965. A CIA memorandum for the record, of August 1965, summarizes a Washington meeting on his mission, attended by officials from State, including [[Walt Rostow]], from the White House, from [[United States Agency for International Development|AID]] and [[United States Information Agency|USIA]], and from the CIA, including [[William Colby]]. At that meeting Lansdale described his concept of the mission as finding out what the Vietnamese thought, what they wanted and what they would do, and as unifying the efforts of the American mission.[^54]
Congressional remarks by Representative [[Claude Pepper]], reprinting a Washington Post item of August 20, 1965, described Lansdale as being sent to South Vietnam as a special assistant to Ambassador [[Henry Cabot Lodge]].[^55] The Pentagon Papers state that Lansdale "never got to Vietnam until Cabot Lodge brought him out later in 1965," despite four requests from Diem and recommendations from Cottrell, the Taylor report and William Bundy that he be sent.[^56] In late August 1965 Lodge announced Lansdale's appointment as chairman of the U.S. Mission liaison group to the South Vietnamese government's CRCC.[^57]
His 1965 post carried less operational authority than his earlier mission. A New York World Journal Tribune article of March 26, 1967 reported that Lansdale had returned to Vietnam in September 1965 with Lodge, under the unusual and rather vague title of senior liaison officer, with ministerial rank, as a member of a ten-man mission council.[^58] The senior liaison office staff worked on winning support in the Vietnamese countryside, and President [[Lyndon B. Johnson]] also appointed Lansdale a minister. From 1967 to 1968 he was an assistant to Ambassador [[Ellsworth Bunker]] at the U.S. Mission in South Vietnam.[^2] Lansdale was recalled in 1968 without the political reform he believed essential to South Vietnam's survival.[^1]
Lansdale died in McLean, Virginia, on February 23, 1987.[^2]
### Fletcher Prouty's claims
Col. L. Fletcher Prouty wrote about Lansdale in two publications, one placing him in the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the other connecting him to the story of President Kennedy's assassination. In a 1986 article in [[Freedom (magazine)|Freedom]], Prouty wrote that he and Lansdale flew to [[Fort Gordon]], Georgia, on November 1, 1960 to collect elements of a Civil Affairs and Military Government curriculum, and that both were then assigned to the Office of the Secretary of Defense. Prouty described Lansdale as a principal proponent of what he called the "Mao doctrine" of counterinsurgency, which he wrote was introduced into the White House under the guise of a mutual security program.[^59]
In his 1992 book on the assassination and Vietnam, Prouty asked where the Joint Chiefs, Lansdale and [[Allen Dulles]] were when the guns sounded in the streets of Dallas. He wrote that Cuban exile groups from Louisiana and their instructors became suspects in the investigation, that many of them were later recruited into the larger program Operation Mongoose under Lansdale, and that the identification of [[Lee Harvey Oswald]] as the scapegoat served as a cover story.[^60]
### Footnotes
[^1]: Currey, Cecil B. *Edward Lansdale: The Unquiet American.* Houghton Mifflin, 1988. Lansdale, Edward Geary. *In the Midst of Wars: An American's Mission to Southeast Asia.* Harper & Row, 1972.
[^2]: Thomas, Evan. *The Very Best Men: Four Who Dared: The Early Years of the CIA.* Simon & Schuster, 1995. Church Committee (U.S. Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities). *Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders.* Senate Report No. 94-465, 1975.
[^1]: Currey, Cecil B. *Edward Lansdale: The Unquiet American*. Houghton Mifflin, 1988.
[^2]: Hoover Institution Library & Archives, *Register of the Edward Geary Lansdale papers, 1910-1987*, Online Archive of California, biographical chronology (born Detroit, February 6, 1908; O.S.S. 1942-1945; JUSMAG 1950; O'Daniel mission 1953; Saigon 1954-1956; Office of the Secretary of Defense 1957, 1959, 1960 and 1961; retirement October 31, 1963; senior liaison officer 1965-1967; assistant to Ambassador Bunker 1967-1968; death at McLean, Virginia, February 23, 1987). https://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/tf6v19n8cp/
[^3]: Prouty, L. Fletcher. *JFK: The CIA, Vietnam, and the Plot to Assassinate John F. Kennedy*. Carol Publishing Group, 1992, on Lansdale's OSS service and his assignment to the Office of Policy Coordination in November 1949. https://archive.org/details/jfkciavietnamplo0000prou_r5p5
[^4]: Greenberg, Lawrence M. *The Hukbalahap Insurrection: A Case Study of a Successful Anti-Insurgency Operation in the Philippines, 1946-1955*. Washington, D.C.: Center of Military History, United States Army, 1986, section on Lansdale's JUSMAG assignment and the Magsaysay request. https://archive.org/details/hukbalahapinsurr00lawr
[^5]: Greenberg, *The Hukbalahap Insurrection*, section on psychological warfare operations of the Armed Forces of the Philippines, describing the Scout-Ranger leaflets, "The Eye," and the altered-cartridge tactic. https://archive.org/details/hukbalahapinsurr00lawr
[^6]: Edward Geary Lansdale, *In the Midst of Wars: An American's Mission to Southeast Asia* (New York: Harper & Row, 1972; reprint, New York: Fordham University Press, 1991), pp. 72-75. https://archive.org/details/inmidstofwarsame0000lans
[^7]: Saigon Military Mission report, excerpted as Document 95 in *The Pentagon Papers, The Senator Gravel Edition*, vol. I, pp. 573-574, on the mission's origin in a Washington policy meeting and the arrival of Lansdale in Saigon on June 1, 1954. https://archive.org/details/pentagonpapersth01unit
[^8]: Saigon Military Mission report, *Pentagon Papers*, Gravel ed., vol. I, pp. 573-574, on the mission's broad statement of purpose. https://archive.org/details/pentagonpapersth01unit
[^9]: Saigon Military Mission report, *Pentagon Papers*, Gravel ed., vol. I, p. 574, on the assistant air attache cover arranged by O'Daniel and McClintock and the communications through the CIA station. https://archive.org/details/pentagonpapersth01unit
[^10]: Saigon Military Mission report, *Pentagon Papers*, Gravel ed., vol. I, pp. 574-579, covering the Diem arrival of July 7, 1954 (p. 575), the refugee commission proposal and Operation Brotherhood (p. 576), the black propaganda strike in Hanoi (pp. 578-579) and the Viet Minh leaflet for the southern transport (p. 579), and the Diem agreement with Trinh Minh The (p. 578). https://archive.org/details/pentagonpapersth01unit
[^11]: *Pentagon Papers*, Gravel ed., vol. I, pp. 289-291, on the some 900,000 civilians who exercised their option under Article 14(d) of the armistice (pp. 289-290) and the estimated 65 percent of North Vietnam's Catholics, more than 600,000 in all, who moved south (p. 291). https://archive.org/details/pentagonpapersth01unit
[^12]: Saigon Military Mission report, *Pentagon Papers*, Gravel ed., vol. I, p. 577, on the northern team's cover duties supervising the Hanoi refugee airlift. https://archive.org/details/pentagonpapersth01unit
[^13]: Saigon Military Mission report, *Pentagon Papers*, Gravel ed., vol. I, p. 578, on the attempt to destroy the Hanoi printing presses in September 1954. https://archive.org/details/pentagonpapersth01unit
[^14]: Saigon Military Mission report, *Pentagon Papers*, Gravel ed., vol. I, p. 579, on the evacuation of Hanoi on October 9, 1954, the contamination of the bus company oil supply and the delayed sabotage of the railroad. https://archive.org/details/pentagonpapersth01unit
[^15]: *United States-Vietnam Relations, 1945-1967*, Book 2, Part IV.B.1, sections on the Lansdale report of January 1961 and the Taylor mission, quoting the Defense Department's statement that Lansdale "was a key figure in installing and establishing Diem as President of South Vietnam." DTIC ADA542557. https://archive.org/details/DTIC_ADA542557
[^16]: Saigon Military Mission report, *Pentagon Papers*, Gravel ed., vol. I, pp. 577-580, on the dispute between Diem and General Hinh, the invitation to the Philippines on October 26, 1954, the arrival of Collins on November 8 and Hinh's departure on November 29. https://archive.org/details/pentagonpapersth01unit
[^17]: Saigon Military Mission report, *Pentagon Papers*, Gravel ed., vol. I, pp. 580-581, on Freedom Company and the training camp on the Clark Air Base reservation. https://archive.org/details/pentagonpapersth01unit
[^18]: Saigon Military Mission report, *Pentagon Papers*, Gravel ed., vol. I, pp. 581-582, on the almanac, the transfer to the Training Relations and Instruction Mission and the loan of Colonel Valeriano. https://archive.org/details/pentagonpapersth01unit
[^19]: Greene, Graham. *The Quiet American*. Heinemann, 1955.
[^20]: McGrory, Mary. "'Old Asia Hand' Going Back But Highly Effective," *Washington Star*, undated clipping on Lodge's second mission to Vietnam. CIA reading room document CIA-RDP75-00001R000300430064-8. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp75-00001r000300430064-8
[^21]: *Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963*, vol. I, doc. 6, Letter From the Secretary of Defense's Deputy Assistant for Special Operations (Lansdale) to President Diem, Washington, January 30, 1961. Source line: Hoover Institution, Lansdale Papers. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v01/d6
[^22]: *Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963*, vol. I, doc. 73, Memorandum From the Secretary of Defense's Assistant for Special Operations (Lansdale) to the Deputy Secretary of Defense (Gilpatric), Washington, June 26, 1961. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v01/d73
[^23]: *United States-Vietnam Relations, 1945-1967*, Department of Defense study, Book 2, Part IV.B.1, "Evolution of the War: The Kennedy Program and Commitments, 1961," sections on the Lansdale report of January 1961, the Gilpatric task force, and Brigadier General Edward G. Lansdale, OSO/OSD. DTIC ADA542557. https://archive.org/details/DTIC_ADA542557
[^24]: *Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963*, vol. I, doc. 182, Memorandum From the Secretary of Defense's Deputy Assistant for Special Operations (Lansdale) to the President's Military Representative (Taylor), Saigon, October 21, 1961, on Lansdale's talk with Ngo Dinh Nhu on October 19. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v01/d182
[^25]: *Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963*, vol. X, doc. 270, Editorial Note on the November 3, 1961 meeting, quoting Robert Kennedy's handwritten notes, which list "Lansdale (the Ugly American)." https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v10/d270
[^26]: *Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963*, vol. I, doc. 293, Letter From the Secretary of Defense's Assistant for Special Operations (Lansdale) to General Samuel T. Williams, Washington, November 28, 1961. Source line: Hoover Institution Archives, Williams Papers. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v01/d293
[^27]: *Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963*, vol. X, doc. 277, Memorandum From General Edward Lansdale to Attorney General Kennedy, Washington, November 30, 1961. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v10/d277
[^28]: *Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963*, vol. X, doc. 309, Program Review, Washington, March 2, 1962, entry for November 30, 1961. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v10/d309
[^29]: Church Committee (U.S. Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities), *Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders*, S. Rept. 94-465 (1975), pp. 140-141, on Taylor's chairmanship of the Special Group (Augmented), Lansdale's appointment as chief of operations, Robert Kennedy's role, and Task Force W. https://archive.org/details/allegedassassina00unit
[^30]: *Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963*, vol. X, doc. 359, Memorandum From the CIA Operations Officer for Operation Mongoose (Harvey) to the Chief of Operations (Lansdale), Washington, July 24, 1962. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v10/d359
[^31]: *Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963*, vol. X, doc. 360, Memorandum From the Chief of Operations, Operation Mongoose (Lansdale), to the Special Group (Augmented), Washington, July 25, 1962. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v10/d360
[^32]: *Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963*, vol. X, doc. 380, Memorandum From the President's Military Representative (Taylor) to President Kennedy, Washington, August 17, 1962. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v10/d380
[^33]: *Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963*, vol. XI, doc. 10, Memorandum From the CIA Project Officer for Operation Mongoose (Harvey) to the Chief of Operations (Lansdale), Washington, October 8, 1962, "Sabotage of Cuban-Owned Ship." https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v11/d10
[^34]: Thomas, Evan. *The Very Best Men: Four Who Dared: The Early Years of the CIA.* Simon & Schuster, 1995.
[^35]: Church Committee, *Alleged Assassination Plots*, S. Rept. 94-465, pp. 142-143, on the January 18, 1962 assignment of 32 tasks. https://archive.org/details/allegedassassina00unit
[^36]: *Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963*, vol. X, doc. 293, Memorandum From the Chief of Operations, Operation Mongoose (Lansdale), to the Members of the Caribbean Survey Group, Washington, January 20, 1962. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v10/d293
[^37]: Church Committee, *Alleged Assassination Plots*, S. Rept. 94-465, p. 143, on Task 33, Lansdale's testimony of July 8, 1975 (p. 29), and Lansdale's testimony of July 8, 1975 (p. 45) on the "touchdown play." https://archive.org/details/allegedassassina00unit
[^38]: *Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963*, vol. X, doc. 297, Memorandum From the Chief of Operations, Operation Mongoose (Lansdale), Washington, January 26, 1962, "Tasks 29 and 33, Cuba Project." https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v10/d297
[^39]: Church Committee, *Alleged Assassination Plots*, S. Rept. 94-465, pp. 143-145, on the six-phase schedule, the approval of the first phase, and the Guidelines for Operation MONGOOSE of March 14, 1962. https://archive.org/details/allegedassassina00unit
[^40]: Church Committee, *Alleged Assassination Plots*, S. Rept. 94-465, p. 142 n. 2, quoting the testimony of Parrott, July 10, 1975, pp. 49-50. https://archive.org/details/allegedassassina00unit
[^41]: *Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963*, vol. X, doc. 414, Memorandum From the Assistant to the President's Military Representative (Parrott) to the President's Special Assistant for National Security Affairs (Bundy), Washington, September 6, 1962, identifying Parrott's office. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v10/d414
[^42]: Church Committee, *Alleged Assassination Plots*, S. Rept. 94-465, pp. 143-144, on the February 20, 1962 six-phase schedule and Lansdale's testimony of July 8, 1975, pp. 104-107. https://archive.org/details/allegedassassina00unit
[^43]: Church Committee, *Alleged Assassination Plots*, S. Rept. 94-465, p. 144, on Operation Bounty, citing Craig's memorandum to Lansdale of January 30, 1962 and Lansdale's testimony of July 8, 1975, p. 26. https://archive.org/details/allegedassassina00unit
[^44]: *Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963*, vol. X, doc. 310, Memorandum From the Chief of Operations, Operation Mongoose (Lansdale), to the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs (Goodwin), Washington, March 6, 1962. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v10/d310
[^45]: Joint Chiefs of Staff, "Justification for US Military Intervention in Cuba," memorandum to the Secretary of Defense, March 13, 1962, National Security Archive, Operation Northwoods documents. https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/news/20010430/index.htm
[^46]: Martin, David C., Associated Press, "Plan to Slay Castro Tied to JFK Orders," *The Washington Post*, May 1, 1975. CIA reading room document CIA-RDP90-01208R000100160011-4. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp90-01208r000100160011-4
[^47]: Church Committee, *Alleged Assassination Plots*, S. Rept. 94-465, pp. 161-163, on Lansdale's memorandum of August 13, 1962, Harvey's memorandum to Helms of August 14, and the August 10, 1962 meeting. https://archive.org/details/allegedassassina00unit
[^48]: *Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963*, vol. X, doc. 366, Memorandum From the Chief of Operations, Operation Mongoose (Lansdale), to the CIA Operations Officer (Harvey), Washington, August 6, 1962, "CIA Draft Operational Plan B+." https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v10/d366
[^49]: *Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963*, vol. X, doc. 378, Memorandum of Meeting, Washington, August 16, 1962, prepared by McCone. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v10/d378
[^50]: Church Committee, *Alleged Assassination Plots*, S. Rept. 94-465, p. 148, citing Harvey's testimony of July 11, 1975, pp. 80-81, on the agent teams and McCone's order, and citing Lansdale's memorandum for the record of October 30, 1962 on the halt. https://archive.org/details/allegedassassina00unit
[^51]: Church Committee, *Alleged Assassination Plots*, S. Rept. 94-465, chronology, p. 293, "November: Operation MONGOOSE ends." https://archive.org/details/allegedassassina00unit
[^52]: Central Intelligence Agency, memorandum "Appointment of Mr. William K. Harvey Chief of Station, Rome, Italy," June 12, 1963. CIA reading room document 01228805. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-01228805
[^53]: Thomas, Evan. *The Very Best Men: Four Who Dared: The Early Years of the CIA*. Simon & Schuster, 1995.
[^54]: Central Intelligence Agency, memorandum for the record, "Lansdale Mission to Vietnam," August 1965, participants including Unger, Lansdale, Rostow, Colby and Bohannan. CIA reading room document CIA-RDP80R01580R001603420030-5. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp80r01580r001603420030-5
[^55]: Congressional Record, 89th Congress, August 1965, remarks of Rep. Claude Pepper extending remarks with a Washington Post item of August 20, 1965, on Lansdale's appointment as special assistant to Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge. CIA reading room document CIA-RDP75-00001R000300430053-0. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp75-00001r000300430053-0
[^56]: *Pentagon Papers*, Gravel ed., vol. II, pp. 126-130, on Lansdale's arrival in Vietnam in 1965 and the four requests from Diem. https://archive.org/details/pentagonpapers025197
[^57]: *Pentagon Papers*, Gravel ed., vol. II, pp. 364-366, on Lodge's announcement in late August 1965 of Lansdale as chairman of the U.S. Mission liaison group to the GVN CRCC. https://archive.org/details/pentagonpapers025197
[^58]: *New York World Journal Tribune*, March 26, 1967, on Lansdale's title and position in the U.S. Embassy. CIA reading room document CIA-RDP75-00001R000300430002-6. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp75-00001r000300430002-6
[^59]: Prouty, L. Fletcher. "Building to the Final Confrontation: John F. Kennedy vs. the CIA," *Freedom*, July 1986, on the Fort Gordon trip of November 1, 1960 and the "Mao doctrine." https://archive.org/details/building-to-the-final-confrontation-john-f.-kennedy-vs.-the-cia-by-l.-fletcher-p
[^60]: Prouty, L. Fletcher. *JFK: The CIA, Vietnam, and the Plot to Assassinate John F. Kennedy*. Carol Publishing Group, 1992, chapters on the Kennedy-era covert programs and on the assassination. https://archive.org/details/jfkciavietnamplo0000prou_r5p5

3
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Henry A. Kissinger.md
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@ -124,7 +124,6 @@ relations:
start: 1986-07-01
end: 1988-06-30
fn: 65
---
Henry Alfred Kissinger (1923 to 2023) was a German-born American political scientist and diplomat who served as [[United States Secretary of State]] and as National Security Advisor under Presidents [[Richard Nixon]] and [[Gerald R. Ford]]. [[Seymour Hersh]] wrote that in the fall of 1967, while a [[Harvard University]] professor and consultant on [[Vietnam]] to the [[Lyndon B. Johnson|Johnson]] administration, Kissinger visited [[Tel Aviv]] to teach for a week at the Israeli Defense College, and that at the end of that course he went to [[William N. Dale]]'s office in the embassy and sent an urgent, top-secret message to the [[White House]] warning about [[Dimona]] and concluding that [[Israel]] was making nuclear warheads.[^1]
@ -281,7 +280,7 @@ Gonzalez also reported that Eagleburger was at a meeting between the bank's mana
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee's December 1992 report on [[Bank of Credit and Commerce International]] by [[John Kerry]] and [[Hank Brown]] devotes its chapter 20 to Kissinger Associates. It states that from the fall of 1986 through early 1989 BCCI initiated contacts with the firm, which then had five partners (Kissinger, Scowcroft, Eagleburger, Alan Stoga and T. Jefferson Cunningham III); that Stoga and a retired Brazilian ambassador working as a Kissinger Associates consultant, Sergio Correa da Costa, explored ways to link BCCI's banks with the firm's services; and that the discussions "ended in early 1989 at Henry Kissinger's personal insistence," after which Kissinger Associates referred BCCI to its director William D. Rogers and the law firm [[Arnold & Porter]]. Letters of November 3, 1986 set da Costa's terms at $40,000 a year plus 10 to 20 percent of fees on transactions he arranged, and da Costa told Kissinger in them that he would also work for BCCI. In the summer of 1987 da Costa wrote to the firm about "that amusing luncheon with the BNL crowd." On September 20, 1987 da Costa invited Kissinger to a dinner at the plantation of the BCCI shareholder [[Ghaith Pharaon]], suggesting Pharaon as a client; the report states that Kissinger declined the invitation.[^66]
In a letter of January 30, 1992 to Kerry, the firm's attorney [[Lloyd Cutler]] wrote that Kissinger Associates "have never represented or provided any services for BCCI, ICIC, or any BCCI shareholder." The committee wrote that the account "is not untrue" but "does fail to characterize the full extent of the contacts," and that the firm refused to provide its client list to the subcommittee.[^66] A note by Steven Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists on the copy of the report published by that organization states that Hank Brown, "reportedly acting at the behest of Henry Kissinger," pressed after its release for the deletion of a few passages, particularly in chapter 20, so that the Government Printing Office edition differs slightly from the committee's softcopy.[^66]
In a letter of January 30, 1992 to Kerry, the firm's attorney [[Lloyd Cutler]] wrote that Kissinger Associates "have never represented or provided any services for BCCI, ICIC, or any BCCI shareholder." The committee's electronic text, published by the Federation of American Scientists, adds the comment that the account "is not untrue" but "does fail to characterize the full extent of the contacts"; the Government Printing Office print omits that comment, and both editions record that the firm declined to provide its client list to the subcommittee. The printed chapter says the contacts "extended over a period of 2 years" and adds a paragraph stating that "in each case reviewed by the Subcommittee, Kissinger declined the overtures."[^66] A note by Steven Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists on the copy of the report published by that organization states that Hank Brown, "reportedly acting at the behest of Henry Kissinger," pressed after its release for the deletion of a few passages, particularly in chapter 20, so that the Government Printing Office edition differs slightly from the committee's softcopy.[^66]
### Telephone Transcripts

9
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Michael Milken.md
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@ -5,16 +5,17 @@ tags:
- IranContra
- CIA
- Israel
summary: "Large amounts of money from the arms sales to Iran were funneled through American banks and held at Drexel Burnham, contributing to Milken's firm's stature and its ability to underwrite huge quantities of junk bonds."
summary: "According to Ari Ben-Menashe, money from the arms sales to Iran was held at Drexel Burnham, adding to Milken's firm's ability to underwrite junk bonds."
born: 1946-07-04
location: "Encino, California, USA"
---
[[Michael Milken]] was a prominent stockbroker known for building his junk-bond fortune at the brokerage house [[Drexel Burnham]]. His activities intersected with the financial operations of the [[Iran-Israel Joint Committee]]'s slush fund.
[[Michael Milken]] was a prominent stockbroker known for building his junk-bond fortune at the brokerage house [[Drexel Burnham]]. According to [[Ari Ben-Menashe]], his activities intersected with the financial operations of the [[Iran-Israel Joint Committee]]'s slush fund.
Large amounts of money from the arms sales to [[Iran]] were funneled through [[United States|American]] banks and held at [[Drexel Burnham]], contributing to Milken's firm's stature and its ability to underwrite huge quantities of junk bonds. These deposits were managed on behalf of [[Israel|Israeli]] front companies.[^1]
Ben-Menashe wrote that large amounts of money from the arms sales to [[Iran]] were funneled through [[United States|American]] banks and held at Drexel Burnham, contributing to Milken's firm's stature and its ability to underwrite huge quantities of junk bonds, and that these deposits were managed on behalf of [[Israel|Israeli]] front companies.[^1]
In 1987, the [[Iran-Israel Joint Committee]] decided to withdraw its funds from Drexel, a decision that contributed to Milken's growing troubles and ultimately to the fall of Drexel Burnham.[^1]
He wrote that in 1987 the Iran-Israel Joint Committee decided to withdraw its funds from Drexel, a decision that contributed to Milken's growing troubles and ultimately to the fall of Drexel Burnham.[^1]
### Footnotes
[^1]: Ben-Menashe, Ari. *Profits of War: Inside the Secret U.S.-Israeli Arms Network*. Sheridan Square Press, 1992 (TrineDay reprint, 2015).

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@ -8,15 +8,16 @@ tags:
summary: "Colonel Mohammed Jalali was the Defense Minister of Iran."
---
Colonel [[Mohammed Jalali]] was the Defense Minister of [[Iran]]. He was a key figure in the [[Iran|Iranian]] government's arms procurement during the [[Iran-Iraq War]] and had direct dealings with [[Israel|Israeli]] and [[United States|U.S.]] officials.[^1]
Colonel [[Mohammed Jalali]] was the Defense Minister of [[Iran]]. He was a key figure in the Iranian government's arms procurement during the [[Iran-Iraq War]] and had direct dealings with [[Israel|Israeli]] and [[United States|U.S.]] officials.[^1]
[[Mohammed Jalali|Jalali]] worked with the [[Iran-Israel Joint Committee|Israeli Joint Committee]] and was involved in negotiations for arms sales to [[Iran]]. In July 1987, he met with [[Robert Gates]] in [[Kansas City]] to seek assurances that arms supplies to [[Iran]] would continue despite the [[Iran-Contra Affair]] scandal. He also expressed concern about the [[United States|U.S.]] supporting the supply of chemical weapons to [[Iraq]].[^1]
According to [[Ari Ben-Menashe]], Jalali worked with the [[Iran-Israel Joint Committee|Israeli Joint Committee]] and was involved in negotiations for arms sales to Iran, and in July 1987 he met with [[Robert Gates]] in [[Kansas City]] to seek assurances that arms supplies to Iran would continue despite the [[Iran-Contra Affair]] scandal. He also expressed concern about the U.S. supporting the supply of chemical weapons to [[Iraq]].[^1]
In late 1985, [[Mohammed Jalali|Jalali]] was part of a faction within the [[Iran|Iranian]] Supreme Council that was loyal to [[Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani|Hojjat El-Islam Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani]]. He opposed the [[Oliver North|North]]-[[Amiram Nir|Nir]] second channel for arms sales to [[Iran]], and [[Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani|Rafsanjani]] assured [[Israel|Israel]] that there would be no sales through these new people.[^1]
In late 1985, Jalali was part of a faction within the Iranian Supreme Council that was loyal to [[Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani|Hojjat El-Islam Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani]]. He opposed the [[Oliver North|North]]-[[Amiram Nir|Nir]] second channel for arms sales to Iran, and Rafsanjani assured Israel that there would be no sales through these new people.[^1]
[[Mohammed Jalali|Jalali]] was involved in the deal concerning the three [[C-130]] aircraft. He requested these planes in exchange for the release of three [[Israel|Israeli]] soldiers held in [[Lebanon]]. He also pushed for the payment to [[Chile]] for [[F-5E Tiger-2|F-5E]] aircraft and was in favor of leaking to the press that [[Iran]] was in business with [[Santiago]].[^1]
Jalali was involved in the deal concerning the three [[C-130]] aircraft. He requested these planes in exchange for the release of three Israeli soldiers held in [[Lebanon]]. He also pushed for the payment to [[Chile]] for [[F-5E Tiger-2|F-5E]] aircraft and was in favor of leaking to the press that Iran was in business with [[Santiago]].[^1]
[[Mohammed Jalali|Jalali]] is mentioned as being retired and living in [[Iran]] with a second home in [[London]] as of 1992.[^1]
Jalali is mentioned as being retired and living in Iran with a second home in [[London]] as of 1992.[^1]
### Footnotes
[^1]: Ben-Menashe, Ari. *Profits of War: Inside the Secret U.S.-Israeli Arms Network*. Sheridan Square Press, 1992 (TrineDay reprint, 2015).

9
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@ -5,13 +5,14 @@ tags:
summary: "Major Moshe Hebroni was the chief of staff for the director of Israeli Military Intelligence, Yehoshua Sagi."
---
Major [[Moshe Hebroni]] was the chief of staff for the director of [[Mossad]], [[Yehoshua Sagi]]. He was a member of the initial [[Iran-Israel Joint Committee]].[^1]
Major [[Moshe Hebroni]] was the chief of staff for the director of Israeli Military Intelligence, [[Yehoshua Sagi]]. According to [[Ari Ben-Menashe]], he was a member of the initial [[Iran-Israel Joint Committee]].[^1]
[[Moshe Hebroni|Hebroni]] was involved in expediting the export license for tires sold to [[Iran]] in April 1980. He also received a call from [[Ari Ben-Menashe]] regarding [[Sayeed Mehdi Kashani|Kashani's]] request for military aid from [[Israel]], and instructed [[Ari Ben-Menashe|Ben-Menashe]] to bring [[Sayeed Mehdi Kashani|Kashani]] directly to the general headquarters of [[Israel|IDF]]/MI.[^1]
Hebroni was involved in expediting the export license for tires sold to [[Iran]] in April 1980. He also received a call from Ari Ben-Menashe regarding [[Sayeed Mehdi Kashani|Kashani's]] request for military aid from [[Israel]], and instructed Ben-Menashe to bring Kashani directly to the general headquarters of IDF/MI.[^1]
[[Moshe Hebroni|Hebroni]] was the duty officer who received the letter from [[Pierre Gemayel]] to [[Ariel Sharon]] warning of the impending [[Sabra and Shatila massacres]]. He made copies of the letter and informed [[Yehoshua Sagi|Sagi]]. After the massacres, [[Moshe Hebroni|Hebroni]] was allowed to spend three months as head of branch in the External Relations Department, a period during which he could remove any documentation that might implicate him and [[Yehoshua Sagi|Sagi]] in the massacres.[^1]
Hebroni was the duty officer who received the letter from [[Pierre Gemayel]] to [[Ariel Sharon]] warning of the impending [[Sabra and Shatila massacres]]. He made copies of the letter and informed Sagi. After the massacres, Hebroni was allowed to spend three months as head of branch in the External Relations Department, a period during which he could remove any documentation that might implicate him and Sagi in the massacres.[^1]
[[Moshe Hebroni|Hebroni]] later worked for the [[Jewish Agency]] and was an unofficial adviser to [[Yitzhak Shamir]] after leaving [[Mossad]] in 1989. He confirmed [[Ari Ben-Menashe|Ben-Menashe's]] access to highly sensitive intelligence material.[^1]
Hebroni later worked for the [[Jewish Agency]] and was an unofficial adviser to [[Yitzhak Shamir]] after leaving [[Mossad]] in 1989. He confirmed Ben-Menashe's access to highly sensitive intelligence material.[^1]
### Footnotes
[^1]: Ben-Menashe, Ari. *Profits of War: Inside the Secret U.S.-Israeli Arms Network*. Sheridan Square Press, 1992 (TrineDay reprint, 2015).

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@ -11,7 +11,7 @@ relations:
- type: employed_by
with: "[[Central Intelligence Agency]]"
role: "acting director"
fn: 7
fn: 8
---
Richard J. Kerr served as Acting [[Central Intelligence Agency]] Director. In 1991, he confirmed that the agency had used [[Bank of Credit and Commerce International|BCCI]] to move money around the world.[^1]
@ -19,13 +19,13 @@ Richard J. Kerr served as Acting [[Central Intelligence Agency]] Director. In 19
Kerr appeared before Senator [[John Kerry]]'s Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics, and International Operations on October 25, 1991, to discuss the CIA's knowledge of BCCI's activities.[^2] He stated that the CIA had not been involved with a BCCI "black network" of thugs and assassins, nor had it used BCCI for arms sales to [[Iran]] or diversion of funds for the [[Nicaraguan Contras]].[^3] He also denied that the CIA had a relationship with [[Agha Hasan Abedi]] or had placed him on a watch list.[^4]
Despite these denials, Kerr admitted that the CIA did maintain accounts with BCCI, describing them as normal operational accounts.[^5] The [[Kerry Committee|Kerry subcommittee]]'s report suggested that [[William J. Casey]]'s actions, including any role in the [[Iran-Contra Affair]], were undertaken in his position as an adviser to the President, rather than as Director of the CIA, allowing them to be undocumented and deniable.[^6]
Despite these denials, Kerr admitted that the CIA did maintain accounts with BCCI, describing them as normal operational accounts.[^5] The Kerry-Brown report states that he acknowledged the agency's extensive use of First American as a repository for "normal banking" and savings accounts.[^6] The [[Kerry Committee|Kerry subcommittee]]'s report suggested that [[William J. Casey]]'s actions, including any role in the [[Iran-Contra Affair]], were undertaken in his position as an adviser to the President, rather than as Director of the CIA, allowing them to be undocumented and deniable.[^7]
### Testimony
Kerr first spoke publicly on BCCI on August 2, 1991. In open testimony on October 25, 1991, he told the subcommittee: "As an intelligence officer for 30 years, I find myself a little reluctant in an open hearing to talk about intelligence, intelligence sources, and intelligence methods." The subcommittee learned from him that the agency had produced not two memoranda on BCCI but hundreds, disseminated to other agencies, and that it had told the [[United States Department of the Treasury|Treasury]] of BCCI's secret ownership of [[First American Bank]] in 1985. In closed session the following week he acknowledged that several questions he had refused to answer in public did not concern classified information, but that he had been "uncomfortable discussing information in public that might embarrass the [[United States]], or any U.S. agency or official."[^7]
Kerr first spoke publicly on BCCI on August 2, 1991. In open testimony on October 25, 1991, he told the subcommittee: "As an intelligence officer for 30 years, I find myself a little reluctant in an open hearing to talk about intelligence, intelligence sources, and intelligence methods." The subcommittee learned from him that the agency had produced not two memoranda on BCCI but hundreds, disseminated to other agencies, and that it had told the [[United States Department of the Treasury|Treasury]] of BCCI's secret ownership of [[First American Bank]] in 1985. In closed session the following week he acknowledged that several questions he had refused to answer in public did not concern classified information, but that he had been "uncomfortable discussing information in public that might embarrass the [[United States]], or any U.S. agency or official."[^8]
He described the agency's use of BCCI for intelligence gathering as "limited and routine, and undertaken without the knowledge of any person at BCCI," a characterization a [[Senate Select Committee on Intelligence|Senate Intelligence Committee]] audit confirmed according to a briefing given to subcommittee staff, and acknowledged that the agency had made "extensive use of First American" for "normal banking" and savings accounts, which neither [[Clark Clifford]] nor [[Robert Altman]] had known of before the summer of 1991. He testified that "allegations that the Agency had any direct or indirect relationship with Abedi or recruited him for CIA activities are absolutely baseless." The [[BCCI Kerry-Brown Senate Report|Kerry-Brown Senate Report]] found that the official record he presented was "by and large, accurately represented," but contained gaps concerning [[Kamal Adham]], [[A. R. (Abdul Raouf) Khalil|Abdul Raouf Khalil]] and [[Adnan Khashoggi]] "which strain belief."[^7]
He described the agency's use of BCCI for intelligence gathering as "limited and routine, and undertaken without the knowledge of any person at BCCI," a characterization a [[Senate Select Committee on Intelligence|Senate Intelligence Committee]] audit confirmed according to a briefing given to subcommittee staff, and acknowledged that the agency had made "extensive use of First American" for "normal banking" and savings accounts, which neither [[Clark Clifford]] nor [[Robert Altman]] had known of before the summer of 1991. He testified that "allegations that the Agency had any direct or indirect relationship with Abedi or recruited him for CIA activities are absolutely baseless." The [[BCCI Kerry-Brown Senate Report|Kerry-Brown Senate Report]] found that the official record he presented was "by and large, accurately represented," but contained gaps concerning [[Kamal Adham]], [[A. R. (Abdul Raouf) Khalil|Abdul Raouf Khalil]] and [[Adnan Khashoggi]] "which strain belief."[^8]
### Footnotes
@ -34,5 +34,6 @@ He described the agency's use of BCCI for intelligence gathering as "limited and
[^3]: Beaty, Jonathan and Gwynne, S. C. *The Outlaw Bank: A Wild Ride into the Secret Heart of BCCI*. New York: Random House, 1993, p. 348.
[^4]: Beaty, Jonathan and Gwynne, S. C. *The Outlaw Bank: A Wild Ride into the Secret Heart of BCCI*. New York: Random House, 1993, p. 348.
[^5]: Beaty, Jonathan and Gwynne, S. C. *The Outlaw Bank: A Wild Ride into the Secret Heart of BCCI*. New York: Random House, 1993, p. 149.
[^6]: Beaty, Jonathan and Gwynne, S. C. *The Outlaw Bank: A Wild Ride into the Secret Heart of BCCI*. New York: Random House, 1993, p. 348.
[^7]: Kerry, Senator John, and Senator Hank Brown. *The BCCI Affair: A Report to the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate.* December 1992, ch. 11, "BCCI, the CIA and Foreign Intelligence." https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/11intel.htm
[^6]: Kerry and Brown, *The BCCI Affair*, S. Prt. 102-140, ch. 11, p. 292. https://archive.org/details/thebcciaffair_202003
[^7]: Beaty, Jonathan and Gwynne, S. C. *The Outlaw Bank: A Wild Ride into the Secret Heart of BCCI*. New York: Random House, 1993, p. 348.
[^8]: Kerry, Senator John, and Senator Hank Brown. *The BCCI Affair: A Report to the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate.* December 1992, ch. 11, "BCCI, the CIA and Foreign Intelligence." https://irp.fas.org/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/11intel.htm

2
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Robert Kennedy.md
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@ -94,7 +94,7 @@ On March 16, 1964, Branch 4 of the Covert Action Staff requested covert security
A [[United States Department of Justice|Justice Department]] deportation sent [[Carlos Marcello]] to [[Guatemala]] on April 4, 1961. A May 24, 1961 [[Federal Bureau of Investigation|FBI]] memorandum from R. O. Lallier to A. H. Belmont, reporting a May 12 interview in Guatemala City, records the account of [[Paul Loeb]], chief of the CIA station there. Loeb said it was his understanding that Attorney General Kennedy had conferred with [[Allen Dulles]] and asked for the CIA director's help in making certain Guatemala accepted Marcello as a citizen, and that he received instructions from headquarters to give the matter special handling. Loeb said he then approached President [[Miguel Ydigoras]], who insisted that the matter be handled quietly, and that he was at the airport when Marcello arrived on a U.S. Border Patrol plane to find 15 to 20 reporters waiting. According to the memorandum, Marcello was to be returned to the United States on or about May 10 but did not appear at the airport, and Loeb was convinced he was living on a farm in the interior of Guatemala.[^10]
On November 1, 1961, the White House aide [[Richard Goodwin]] wrote to President Kennedy that "the Attorney General would be the most effective commander" of a "command operation" for Cuba. After a White House meeting on November 3, 1961 on a new program against [[Fidel Castro]], Kennedy's handwritten notes read: "My idea is to stir things up on island with espionage, sabotage, general disorder, run & operated by Cubans themselves with every group but Batistaites & Communists." A presidential memorandum of November 22 assigned the direction of the program to the Attorney General, with [[Edward Lansdale]] as his chief of operations; the version issued on November 30 placed the program "under the general guidance of General Lansdale, acting as Chief of Operations," and assigned the Attorney General no direction role.[^11]
On November 1, 1961, the White House aide [[Richard Goodwin]] wrote to President Kennedy that "the Attorney General would be the most effective commander" of a "command operation" for Cuba. After a White House meeting on November 3, 1961 on a new program against [[Fidel Castro]], Kennedy's handwritten notes read: "My idea is to stir things up on island with espionage, sabotage, general disorder, run & operated by Cubans themselves with every group but Batistaites & Communists." The notes list [[Edward Lansdale]] among those present as "Lansdale (the Ugly American)," record McNamara saying that he would make Lansdale available, and record Robert Kennedy assigning him "to make survey of situation in Cuba."[^11] A presidential memorandum of November 22 assigned the direction of the program to the Attorney General, with Edward Lansdale as his chief of operations; the version issued on November 30 placed the program "under the general guidance of General Lansdale, acting as Chief of Operations," and assigned the Attorney General no direction role.[^11]
The program, [[Operation Mongoose]], was overseen by a group called the Special Group (Augmented) ([[NSC Special Group|Special Group (Augmented)]]), consisting of the regular Special Group members ([[McGeorge Bundy]], [[U. Alexis Johnson]], [[Roswell Gilpatric]], [[John McCone]] and [[Lyman Lemnitzer]]) augmented by Robert Kennedy and General [[Maxwell Taylor]]. President Kennedy appointed Taylor chairman of the group. The State Department editors of the Foreign Relations series wrote that Robert Kennedy "was the principal motive force within the group and the informal link between the group and the President," and the [[Church Committee]] wrote that Kennedy "played an active role in the MONGOOSE Operation, a role unrelated to his position as Attorney General."[^11][^12] The Church Committee also records Goodwin's proposal that Kennedy head Mongoose and the President's decision to give Lansdale the coordinating task instead.[^12]

38
10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Robert McFarlane.md
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@ -7,7 +7,7 @@ aliases:
- Robert C. "Bud" McFarlane
- Robert Carl McFarlane
created: 2026-05-17
updated: 2026-10-12
updated: 2026-10-14
category: "Intelligence & Government"
tags:
- KeyFigure
@ -47,14 +47,14 @@ relations:
start: 1984
end: 1986-11
role: "organized third-country Contra funding, an early advocate of the Iran arms sales, and led the May 1986 mission to Tehran"
fn: 8
fn: 12
- type: prosecuted
with: "[[Lawrence Walsh]]"
reverse: true
start: 1988-03-11
end: 1992-12-24
role: "pleaded guilty March 11, 1988 to four misdemeanor counts of withholding information from Congress; sentenced March 3, 1989; pardoned December 24, 1992"
fn: 10
fn: 14
---
Robert C. "Bud" McFarlane was a [[United States Naval Academy|Naval Academy]] graduate and Marine Corps officer who served as President [[Ronald Reagan]]'s national security adviser from October 1983 to December 1985. Before that he had been deputy to his predecessor [[William Clark]], counselor to Secretary of State [[Alexander Haig]], a staff member of the [[United States Senate Committee on Armed Services|Senate Armed Services Committee]], and military aide to [[Henry Kissinger]] when Kissinger was national security adviser to [[Richard Nixon]]. He commanded the first U.S. Marine battery to land in the Republic of [[Vietnam]], completed two tours, received a Bronze Star, and resigned from the [[United States Marine Corps]] as a lieutenant colonel.[^1] [[Lawrence Walsh]]'s Final Report records that under Reagan the [[National Security Council]] staff "at times became operational, taking on primary responsibility for the execution of the [[Iran]] and contra covert operations," and that McFarlane "did not shrink from the operational tasks that were of high personal interest to the President," delegating some of them to his deputy director of political-military affairs, [[Oliver North]].[^1]
@ -72,11 +72,13 @@ The writer [[Gary Webb]] reported that in January 1985, as the [[FDN]] spent its
McFarlane received North's written reports throughout 1985. Walsh lists six "problem documents" that the NSC general counsel [[Paul Thompson]] pulled from the NSC's System IV file in August 1985 after Representatives [[Michael Barnes]] and [[Lee Hamilton]] asked about press reports of North's activity: a December 4, 1984 memorandum on Chinese SA-7 missiles shipped under false [[Guatemala|Guatemalan]] end-user certificates and on a British security expert for Calero; a February 6, 1985 memorandum proposing that the Nicaraguan merchant ship Monimbo be seized or sunk; a March 5, 1985 memorandum on compensating Guatemala; a March 16, 1985 "Fallback Plan" in which McFarlane marked an additional $25 to $30 million from the Saudis "doubtful"; an April 11, 1985 memorandum reporting that Contra strength had grown from 9,500 to more than 16,000; and a May 31, 1985 memorandum on the delivery of lethal supplies.[^1] On October 30, 1985 North's "Reconnaissance Overflights" memorandum, which told McFarlane that the intelligence would be air-dropped with two Honduran recoilless rifles to sink arms carriers, was marked by [[John Poindexter]] "President approved."[^1]
On September 5, 1985 McFarlane wrote Hamilton that "at no time did I or any member of the National Security Council staff violate the letter or spirit of the law" and that "we did not solicit funds or other support for military or paramilitary activities either from Americans or third parties"; his September 12 letter to Barnes and an October 7 reply to Hamilton's questions said North had not "used his influence to facilitate the movement of supplies." On October 17, 1985 he showed Barnes a stack of NSC documents that could not leave the White House; Barnes did not take up the offer, and McFarlane did not answer his request of October 29 for the documents.[^1] North's secretary [[Fawn Hall]] later altered five of the six documents in November 1986.[^1] Asked at North's 1989 trial whether he lied to Congress, McFarlane said: "At the time I didn't believe it but at the time I was wrong and I admit that," and explained that "you don't lie. You put your own interpretation on what the truth is."[^1]
On September 5, 1985 McFarlane wrote Hamilton that "at no time did I or any member of the National Security Council staff violate the letter or spirit of the law" and that "we did not solicit funds or other support for military or paramilitary activities either from Americans or third parties"; his September 12 letter to Barnes and an October 7 reply to Hamilton's questions said North had not "used his influence to facilitate the movement of supplies."[^7] On October 17, 1985 he showed Barnes a stack of NSC documents that could not leave the White House; Barnes did not take up the offer, and McFarlane did not answer his request of October 29 for the documents.[^1] North's secretary [[Fawn Hall]] later altered five of the six documents in November 1986.[^1] Asked at North's 1989 trial whether he lied to Congress, McFarlane said: "At the time I didn't believe it but at the time I was wrong and I admit that," and explained that "you don't lie. You put your own interpretation on what the truth is."[^1]
Walsh wrote that McFarlane "decided to lie about North's activities in a series of letters to Barnes and Hamilton in September-October 1985."[^8] McFarlane told the Iran-Contra committees that he interpreted the Boland Amendment "that the NSC was not to itself get involved in military or paramilitary activities or replicating the CIA function in those domains," and at the public hearings said: "If we felt that we were not covered, what was I doing?"[^9] On December 10, 1986, answering questions from Representative [[Dick Cheney]] before the House Intelligence Committee, McFarlane testified that in the summer of 1985 he "went to considerable length to determine whether" North had violated the Boland Amendment; the committees wrote that he withheld his concerns about the documents he had reviewed.[^10]
### The Iran initiative, 1985 to 1986
McFarlane and Casey were, in Walsh's words, "the chief advocates of weapons sales to Iran in exchange for the release of American hostages." Walsh wrote that McFarlane "apparently played no role in approving or implementing the Iran/contra diversion."[^7] In spring 1985 McFarlane sent the NSC consultant [[Michael Ledeen]] to Israel; Ledeen testified they had "an understanding that neither of us would keep anything in writing." Ledeen met Prime Minister [[Shimon Peres]] on May 3, 1985. On June 17, 1985 McFarlane circulated a draft National Security Decision Directive recommending the sale of military equipment to Iran; Shultz and Secretary of Defense [[Caspar Weinberger]] opposed it and Casey endorsed it. The Final Report's overall conclusions state that the Iran operations were carried out with the knowledge of Reagan, Bush, Shultz, Weinberger, Casey, McFarlane and Poindexter, of whom only Weinberger and Shultz dissented.[^1][^6][^8]
McFarlane and Casey were, in Walsh's words, "the chief advocates of weapons sales to Iran in exchange for the release of American hostages." Walsh wrote that McFarlane "apparently played no role in approving or implementing the Iran/contra diversion."[^11] In spring 1985 McFarlane sent the NSC consultant [[Michael Ledeen]] to Israel; Ledeen testified they had "an understanding that neither of us would keep anything in writing." Ledeen met Prime Minister [[Shimon Peres]] on May 3, 1985. On June 17, 1985 McFarlane circulated a draft National Security Decision Directive recommending the sale of military equipment to Iran; Shultz and Secretary of Defense [[Caspar Weinberger]] opposed it and Casey endorsed it. The Final Report's overall conclusions state that the Iran operations were carried out with the knowledge of Reagan, Bush, Shultz, Weinberger, Casey, McFarlane and Poindexter, of whom only Weinberger and Shultz dissented.[^1][^6][^12]
On July 3, 1985 [[David Kimche]], director general of the Israeli Foreign Ministry, met McFarlane in [[Washington, D.C.|Washington]]. McFarlane's recollection was that there was no request for arms and no linkage to the hostages, though Kimche mentioned that arms might be raised later, and that Reagan then approved a political dialogue. On August 2, 1985 Kimche asked, "What if Israel were to deliver the TOWs, not the United States, would that be different?" McFarlane testified that Reagan "decided that he would approve Israel's delivery of ... TOW missiles, and that if Israel came to us to purchase replacements they could do that." Israel shipped 96 TOW missiles on August 20, 1985 and 408 on September 14, 1985, the day the Reverend Benjamin Weir was released.[^1][^6] Walsh found that McFarlane "stood alone" in insisting that Reagan had approved the earliest sales and the replenishment, and that "it was only after contemporary notes recording the events in question were discovered late in Independent Counsel's investigation" (notes of [[Charles Hill]], Weinberger and Chief of Staff [[Donald Regan]] obtained in 1990, 1991 and 1992) that much of what he said could be verified.[^1] Weinberger's notes of a December 7, 1985 White House meeting record his objection that the U.S. embargo made such a sale illegal even through Israel.[^1]
@ -84,19 +86,19 @@ McFarlane resigned on December 4, 1985; Reagan told reporters he would be "calli
### Exposure, plea and pardon
After the Lebanese magazine Ash-Shiraa published the story on November 3, 1986, McFarlane publicly called the reports "fanciful" on November 6. On November 8, 1986 he sent North a PROFs message with the subject "Audit trail": "I hope to daylights that someone has been purging the [intelligence] files on this episode."[^1] In February 1987 he was taken to a hospital after an overdose of Valium the day before he was due to testify to the [[Tower Commission]]; Walsh records that he attempted suicide in February 1987 and that the Independent Counsel weighed it when deciding on a plea.[^1][^9]
After the Lebanese magazine Ash-Shiraa published the story on November 3, 1986, McFarlane publicly called the reports "fanciful" on November 6. On November 8, 1986 he sent North a PROFs message with the subject "Audit trail": "I hope to daylights that someone has been purging the [intelligence] files on this episode."[^1] In February 1987 he was taken to a hospital after an overdose of Valium the day before he was due to testify to the [[Tower Commission]]; Walsh records that he attempted suicide in February 1987 and that the Independent Counsel weighed it when deciding on a plea.[^1][^13]
On March 11, 1988 McFarlane pleaded guilty to four misdemeanors of unlawfully withholding information from Congress: his September 5, 1985 reply to Hamilton, his September 12, 1985 reply to Barnes, his October 7, 1985 response to Hamilton's questions, and his December 8, 1986 testimony to the [[House Committee on Foreign Affairs|House Foreign Affairs Committee]] that third-country financing was "beyond my ken." He agreed to cooperate, was named an unindicted co-conspirator in Count One of the March 1988 indictment of Poindexter, North, [[Richard Secord]] and [[Albert Hakim]], and on March 3, 1989 was sentenced to two years' probation, 200 hours of community service and a $20,000 fine. The Independent Counsel gave up felony charges of conspiracy, false statements and obstruction in the plea, and wrote that the prosecution of North and Poindexter "would be seriously hampered by the jury's realization that McFarlane, their superior, had been permitted to plead guilty to crimes less severe than those for which his subordinates were on trial."[^1][^10] After he testified in 1991 that his trial testimony had been "colored" by North's immunized testimony, the Independent Counsel consented to the dismissal of the remaining charges against North.[^11] President George H.W. Bush pardoned McFarlane on December 24, 1992, with Caspar Weinberger, [[Elliott Abrams]], [[Duane Clarridge]], [[Clair George]] and [[Alan Fiers]].[^10]
On March 11, 1988 McFarlane pleaded guilty to four misdemeanors of unlawfully withholding information from Congress: his September 5, 1985 reply to Hamilton, his September 12, 1985 reply to Barnes, his October 7, 1985 response to Hamilton's questions, and his December 8, 1986 testimony to the [[House Committee on Foreign Affairs|House Foreign Affairs Committee]] that third-country financing was "beyond my ken." He agreed to cooperate, was named an unindicted co-conspirator in Count One of the March 1988 indictment of Poindexter, North, [[Richard Secord]] and [[Albert Hakim]], and on March 3, 1989 was sentenced to two years' probation, 200 hours of community service and a $20,000 fine. The Independent Counsel gave up felony charges of conspiracy, false statements and obstruction in the plea, and wrote that the prosecution of North and Poindexter "would be seriously hampered by the jury's realization that McFarlane, their superior, had been permitted to plead guilty to crimes less severe than those for which his subordinates were on trial."[^1][^14] After he testified in 1991 that his trial testimony had been "colored" by North's immunized testimony, the Independent Counsel consented to the dismissal of the remaining charges against North.[^15] President George H.W. Bush pardoned McFarlane on December 24, 1992, with Caspar Weinberger, [[Elliott Abrams]], [[Duane Clarridge]], [[Clair George]] and [[Alan Fiers]].[^14]
### Esquire article and lawsuit
In October 1991 [[Esquire]] published an article by [[Craig Unger]] that quoted [[Ari Ben-Menashe]]. According to the court's account of the article, Ben-Menashe said that McFarlane had been recruited by [[Rafael Eitan]] and that "McFarlane was the famous Mr. X in the [[Jonathan Pollard|Pollard]] case."[^12] The article attributed the recruitment statement to a sworn affidavit that [[Elliot Richardson]] submitted in the [[INSLAW]] litigation for one of his clients. The appeals court found that the recruitment clause "is not in the affidavit," that the affidavit's text "supports only the idea of a 'special relationship'" between McFarlane and [[Earl Brian]] and Israeli intelligence, and recorded that McFarlane "does not dispute that Ben-Menashe made these assertions to Unger."[^12]
In October 1991 [[Esquire]] published an article by [[Craig Unger]] that quoted [[Ari Ben-Menashe]]. According to the court's account of the article, Ben-Menashe said that McFarlane had been recruited by [[Rafael Eitan]] and that "McFarlane was the famous Mr. X in the [[Jonathan Pollard|Pollard]] case."[^16] The article attributed the recruitment statement to a sworn affidavit that [[Elliot Richardson]] submitted in the [[INSLAW]] litigation for one of his clients. The appeals court found that the recruitment clause "is not in the affidavit," that the affidavit's text "supports only the idea of a 'special relationship'" between McFarlane and [[Earl Brian]] and Israeli intelligence, and recorded that McFarlane "does not dispute that Ben-Menashe made these assertions to Unger."[^16]
McFarlane sued the magazine for libel. On January 30, 1996 the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit affirmed the judgment for Esquire. The district court had held that no reasonable jury could find actual malice by clear and convincing evidence, and that it had no personal jurisdiction over Unger.[^12] The article, as the opinion quotes it, continues: "In Pollard's case there were persistent allegations about another, unnamed American who secretly worked for the Israelis."[^12]
McFarlane sued the magazine for libel. On January 30, 1996 the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit affirmed the judgment for Esquire. The district court had held that no reasonable jury could find actual malice by clear and convincing evidence, and that it had no personal jurisdiction over Unger.[^16] The article, as the opinion quotes it, continues: "In Pollard's case there were persistent allegations about another, unnamed American who secretly worked for the Israelis."[^16]
### Death
McFarlane died on May 12, 2022, at a hospital in Lansing, Michigan, aged 84; his son Scott McFarlane said the cause was an exacerbation of a lung condition.[^9]
McFarlane died on May 12, 2022, at a hospital in Lansing, Michigan, aged 84; his son Scott McFarlane said the cause was an exacerbation of a lung condition.[^13]
### Footnotes
@ -106,9 +108,13 @@ McFarlane died on May 12, 2022, at a hospital in Lansing, Michigan, aged 84; his
[^4]: Walsh, *Final Report*, vol. I, Part I, "The Funding Cut-Off," quoting the Boland Amendment of October 1984. https://fas.org/irp/offdocs/walsh/part_i.htm
[^5]: Webb, Gary. *Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion.* Seven Stories Press, 1998, ch. 10, "Teach a man a craft and he's liable to practice it."
[^6]: Brinkley and Engelberg, eds., *Report of the Congressional Committees*, "Iran-Contra Chronology," entries for February 1985, May 3, June 17, July to September 1985, December 4 to 8, 1985. https://archive.org/details/reportofcongres00unit
[^7]: Walsh, *Final Report of the Independent Counsel for Iran/Contra Matters,* vol. I, part II. https://fas.org/irp/offdocs/walsh/part_ii.htm
[^8]: Walsh, *Final Report*, vol. I, Executive Summary, "Overall Conclusions." https://fas.org/irp/offdocs/walsh/execsum.htm
[^9]: "Robert 'Bud' McFarlane, Reagan national security adviser, dies at 84." Associated Press, May 13, 2022. https://www.bostonglobe.com/2022/05/13/nation/robert-bud-mcfarlane-reagan-national-security-adviser-dies-84
[^10]: Walsh, *Final Report*, vol. I, "Summary of Prosecutions" and ch. 1, section "The Guilty Plea." https://fas.org/irp/offdocs/walsh/summpros.htm
[^11]: Walsh, *Final Report*, vol. I, ch. 2, "United States v. Oliver L. North," section on the dismissal of September 16, 1991. https://fas.org/irp/offdocs/walsh/chap_02.htm
[^12]: *McFarlane v. Esquire Magazine*, 74 F.3d 1296 (D.C. Cir. 1996), No. 94-7137, decided January 30, 1996. https://static.case.law/f3d/74/cases/1296-01.json
[^7]: Walsh, *Final Report of the Independent Counsel for Iran/Contra Matters* (1993), vol. I, ch. 1, nn. 60-62 (letters of Sept. 5, Sept. 12 and Oct. 7, 1985); ch. 2; ch. 4, nn. 57-58; part III. https://irp.fas.org/offdocs/walsh/chap_01.htm
[^8]: Walsh, vol. I, part I, nn. 17-18. https://irp.fas.org/offdocs/walsh/part_i.htm
[^9]: Report of the Congressional Committees Investigating the Iran-Contra Affair, H. Rept. 100-433 and S. Rept. 100-216 (1987), majority views, ch. 26, p. 400 and nn. 48, 66.
[^10]: Iran-Contra report, majority views, ch. 6, p. 132 and nn. 193-194.
[^11]: Walsh, *Final Report of the Independent Counsel for Iran/Contra Matters,* vol. I, part II. https://fas.org/irp/offdocs/walsh/part_ii.htm
[^12]: Walsh, *Final Report*, vol. I, Executive Summary, "Overall Conclusions." https://fas.org/irp/offdocs/walsh/execsum.htm
[^13]: "Robert 'Bud' McFarlane, Reagan national security adviser, dies at 84." Associated Press, May 13, 2022. https://www.bostonglobe.com/2022/05/13/nation/robert-bud-mcfarlane-reagan-national-security-adviser-dies-84
[^14]: Walsh, *Final Report*, vol. I, "Summary of Prosecutions" and ch. 1, section "The Guilty Plea." https://fas.org/irp/offdocs/walsh/summpros.htm
[^15]: Walsh, *Final Report*, vol. I, ch. 2, "United States v. Oliver L. North," section on the dismissal of September 16, 1991. https://fas.org/irp/offdocs/walsh/chap_02.htm
[^16]: *McFarlane v. Esquire Magazine*, 74 F.3d 1296 (D.C. Cir. 1996), No. 94-7137, decided January 30, 1996. https://static.case.law/f3d/74/cases/1296-01.json

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10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/William Harvey.md
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@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
---
created: 2026-05-15
updated: 2026-10-09
updated: 2026-10-14
title: William Harvey
aliases:
- Bill Harvey
@ -52,7 +52,7 @@ relations:
with: "[[CIA Rome Station]]"
role: "chief of station"
start: 1963
fn: 36
fn: 38
- type: participant_in
with: "[[Operation Gold]]"
role: "Berlin base chief running the tunnel with MI6"
@ -140,57 +140,59 @@ Martin wrote that Lansdale told the Senate committee that [[John F. Kennedy]] ha
On August 13, 1962 Lansdale directed Harvey to include an option for the "liquidation of leaders" in a proposed Phase II plan for Mongoose.[^24] Harvey's memorandum of August 14 to Richard Helms attached Lansdale's memorandum with the words excised, and stated that the Special Group (Augmented) "is not expecting any written comments or study on this point."[^24] McCone said that McNamara agreed Lansdale's memorandum should be withdrawn.[^24] Harvey's August 14 memorandum to Helms recorded: "It was the obvious consensus at that meeting, in answer to a comment by Mr. Ed Murrow, that this is not a subject which has been made a matter of official record." McCone's April 14, 1967 memorandum to Helms states that McCone took immediate exception to a suggestion to liquidate top people in the Castro regime, including Castro.[^26] [[Walter Elder]], McCone's executive assistant, testified that he had personally told Helms of McCone's opposition to assassination after the August 10 meeting.[^27]
On August 6, 1962 Lansdale, as chief of operations, replied to Harvey's draft operational plan. He wrote that, "As requested by you in our meeting Monday afternoon, I have read your draft operational plan," and that he "found little basis to say that these were either additional or possible within the context of contributing to the mission as stated." He questioned three items, among them the suggestion that the CIA could generate strikes inside Cuba ("If we have no assets inside Cuba, then why is this now called a possibility?"), and asked Harvey to initial each item he believed was really possible.[^28] On August 16, after that day's meeting of the Special Group (Augmented), Lansdale sent Harvey a memorandum headed "Actions by Cuban Refugees." It said that the Phase II program should give full attention to the desirability of the Cubans liberating Cuba with United States help, and that Bundy had requested that this field of effort be made part of the Phase II guidelines; it proposed that Harvey designate his deputy, Bruce Cheever, to be responsible for the CIA's action. A typed note attached to the copy states that General Taylor asked that action be withheld on the memorandum until further word from him.[^29]
### Roselli and the Poison Pills
On November 16, 1961, Bissell asked Harvey to take over the gambling-syndicate operation from [[Sheffield Edwards]], and they discussed the "application of ZR/RIFLE program to Cuba."[^28] Bissell testified that the operation was not reactivated until after he left the agency in February 1962.[^28]
On November 16, 1961, Bissell asked Harvey to take over the gambling-syndicate operation from [[Sheffield Edwards]], and they discussed the "application of ZR/RIFLE program to Cuba."[^30] Bissell testified that the operation was not reactivated until after he left the agency in February 1962.[^30]
In early April 1962 Harvey, who testified that he was acting on "explicit orders" from Helms, asked Edwards to put him in touch with [[Johnny Roselli]]. A 1976 CIA memorandum dates Harvey's taking over as case officer to May 1962.[^29] Harvey told Roselli to stop dealing with [[Robert Maheu]] and [[Sam Giancana]], whom Harvey had decided were "untrustworthy" and "surplus."[^28]
In early April 1962 Harvey, who testified that he was acting on "explicit orders" from Helms, asked Edwards to put him in touch with [[Johnny Roselli]]. A 1976 CIA memorandum dates Harvey's taking over as case officer to May 1962.[^31] Harvey told Roselli to stop dealing with [[Robert Maheu]] and [[Sam Giancana]], whom Harvey had decided were "untrustworthy" and "surplus."[^30]
Four poison pills were given to the support chief on April 18, 1962. Harvey arrived in [[Miami]] on April 21 and gave them to Roselli, who was already in touch with the same Cuban who had been involved in the pill passage before the [[Bay of Pigs invasion|Bay of Pigs]].[^28] Harvey procured explosives, detonators, rifles, handguns, radios and boat radar costing about $5,000. Harvey and the chief of the JM/WAVE station rented a truck under an assumed name and delivered the equipment to a parking lot, where the keys were given to Roselli.[^28]
Four poison pills were given to the support chief on April 18, 1962. Harvey arrived in [[Miami]] on April 21 and gave them to Roselli, who was already in touch with the same Cuban who had been involved in the pill passage before the [[Bay of Pigs invasion|Bay of Pigs]].[^30] Harvey procured explosives, detonators, rifles, handguns, radios and boat radar costing about $5,000. Harvey and the chief of the JM/WAVE station rented a truck under an assumed name and delivered the equipment to a parking lot, where the keys were given to Roselli.[^30]
Harvey met Roselli in Miami on September 7 and 11, 1962. Harvey testified that by then he had grave doubts that the operation would take place. In early January 1963 he paid Roselli $2,700 to defray the Cuban's expenses. The second three-man team never left for Cuba, the reason given being that "conditions" in Cuba were not right.[^28] Harvey ended the operation in mid-February 1963 at a meeting with Roselli in [[Los Angeles]].[^28]
Harvey met Roselli in Miami on September 7 and 11, 1962. Harvey testified that by then he had grave doubts that the operation would take place. In early January 1963 he paid Roselli $2,700 to defray the Cuban's expenses. The second three-man team never left for Cuba, the reason given being that "conditions" in Cuba were not right.[^30] Harvey ended the operation in mid-February 1963 at a meeting with Roselli in [[Los Angeles]].[^30]
In early 1963 Harvey told his underworld contacts that the CIA was no longer interested in assassinating Castro. The FBI learned of this in June 1963.[^30]
In early 1963 Harvey told his underworld contacts that the CIA was no longer interested in assassinating Castro. The FBI learned of this in June 1963.[^32]
Harvey's operations involving Roselli began in early 1962 and ended in February 1963. Harvey, and to a lesser extent [[James O'Connell]], remained in contact with Roselli from 1964 to about 1970.[^29]
Harvey's operations involving Roselli began in early 1962 and ended in February 1963. Harvey, and to a lesser extent [[James O'Connell]], remained in contact with Roselli from 1964 to about 1970.[^31]
In June 1963, before Harvey went on another assignment, he and Roselli had a farewell dinner. The FBI observed the meeting, and [[Sam Papich]], the FBI liaison with the CIA, told Harvey that Hoover would be informed. Harvey told Helms of the incident, and Helms agreed that McCone need not be briefed unless a call from Hoover was expected.[^31]
In June 1963, before Harvey went on another assignment, he and Roselli had a farewell dinner. The FBI observed the meeting, and [[Sam Papich]], the FBI liaison with the CIA, told Harvey that Hoover would be informed. Harvey told Helms of the incident, and Helms agreed that McCone need not be briefed unless a call from Hoover was expected.[^33]
The [[House Select Committee on Assassinations]], which described Harvey in June 1963 as "chief of the CIA's Cuban Task Force," found it "unable to accept" the conclusion that the CIA-Mafia plots were irrelevant because they ended in February 1963, and reported that CIA files show Roselli continued to maintain direct contact with Harvey at least until 1967.[^32]
The [[House Select Committee on Assassinations]], which described Harvey in June 1963 as "chief of the CIA's Cuban Task Force," found it "unable to accept" the conclusion that the CIA-Mafia plots were irrelevant because they ended in February 1963, and reported that CIA files show Roselli continued to maintain direct contact with Harvey at least until 1967.[^34]
In 1967 Roselli was arrested for fraudulent gambling at the [[Friars Club]] in [[Beverly Hills, California|Beverly Hills]]. He asked Harvey, who had left the agency, to represent him. Harvey contacted the agency and suggested that it prevent the prosecution, according to a December 11, 1967 memorandum by [[Howard Osborn]].[^33]
In 1967 Roselli was arrested for fraudulent gambling at the [[Friars Club]] in [[Beverly Hills, California|Beverly Hills]]. He asked Harvey, who had left the agency, to represent him. Harvey contacted the agency and suggested that it prevent the prosecution, according to a December 11, 1967 memorandum by [[Howard Osborn]].[^35]
### The Clash with Robert Kennedy and the Missile Crisis
Harvey and [[Robert Kennedy]] were openly at odds over Mongoose. Thomas wrote that Harvey regarded Kennedy's micromanagement of the operations as incompetent and dangerous, and that Kennedy regarded Harvey as insubordinate and unreliable.[^1] Harvey testified that during the [[Cuban Missile Crisis]] he gave an order sending agent teams into Cuba to support any conventional U.S. military operation that might occur. He said that Robert Kennedy "took a great deal of exception" to the order, and that McCone then ordered the agent operations stopped.[^34] Walter Elder, McCone's assistant at the time, described the episode as Harvey having "earned another black mark as not being fully under control," and said that Harvey had attempted to get guidance from top officials during the crisis.[^34]
Harvey and [[Robert Kennedy]] were openly at odds over Mongoose. Thomas wrote that Harvey regarded Kennedy's micromanagement of the operations as incompetent and dangerous, and that Kennedy regarded Harvey as insubordinate and unreliable.[^1] Harvey testified that during the [[Cuban Missile Crisis]] he gave an order sending agent teams into Cuba to support any conventional U.S. military operation that might occur. He said that Robert Kennedy "took a great deal of exception" to the order, and that McCone then ordered the agent operations stopped.[^36] Walter Elder, McCone's assistant at the time, described the episode as Harvey having "earned another black mark as not being fully under control," and said that Harvey had attempted to get guidance from top officials during the crisis.[^36]
Martin wrote that Kennedy tied off a series of questions to Harvey with "and I've got 10 minutes to hear the answer," and that when Harvey exceeded his time limit Kennedy walked out and Harvey kept talking.[^5] Martin quoted McCone: "When you take a plant supervisor and make him president of the company, it doesn't always work out," and wrote that Dulles is said to have remarked, "That fellow Harvey is a conspiratorial cop."[^5] Thomas wrote that Robert Kennedy demanded Harvey's removal.[^1]
### Rome and the End of Task Force W
[[Desmond FitzGerald]] replaced Harvey as chief of Task Force W in January 1963.[^35] It is unclear whether Harvey or FitzGerald conceived the plan to present Fidel Castro with a contaminated diving suit.[^35]
[[Desmond FitzGerald]] replaced Harvey as chief of Task Force W in January 1963.[^37] It is unclear whether Harvey or FitzGerald conceived the plan to present Fidel Castro with a contaminated diving suit.[^37]
Harvey was appointed chief of station at Rome, effective on or about June 30, 1963, to replace [[Francis I. G. Coleman]], who was scheduled to attend the [[National War College]].[^36] He took up the Rome post before the November 1963 assassination of John F. Kennedy. Thomas wrote that Robert Kennedy had exiled Harvey to Rome.[^1] Martin wrote in The Washington Post that some attributed the appointment to a wish to keep Harvey out of the country and others to the Rome station's need of a shakeup, that Harvey was hospitalized, that Desmond FitzGerald cabled a report to Helms, that Helms ordered Harvey relieved, that an aide sent to carry out the order sat seven hours across from Harvey, who held a loaded revolver in his lap, and that Harvey was then placed in a unit studying countermeasures against electronic surveillance.[^5]
Harvey was appointed chief of station at Rome, effective on or about June 30, 1963, to replace [[Francis I. G. Coleman]], who was scheduled to attend the [[National War College]].[^38] He took up the Rome post before the November 1963 assassination of John F. Kennedy. Thomas wrote that Robert Kennedy had exiled Harvey to Rome.[^1] Martin wrote in The Washington Post that some attributed the appointment to a wish to keep Harvey out of the country and others to the Rome station's need of a shakeup, that Harvey was hospitalized, that Desmond FitzGerald cabled a report to Helms, that Helms ordered Harvey relieved, that an aide sent to carry out the order sat seven hours across from Harvey, who held a loaded revolver in his lap, and that Harvey was then placed in a unit studying countermeasures against electronic surveillance.[^5]
### Testimony Before the Senate
Harvey testified before the Church Committee in executive session on June 25, 1975 and again on July 11, 1975. He signed an affidavit dated September 14, 1975.[^28] He told the committee that he had acted on explicit orders from Helms, and that he believed the 1962 assassination activity carried over from the period when Allen Dulles was Director, a belief he based on what Bissell had told him.[^18]
Harvey testified before the Church Committee in executive session on June 25, 1975 and again on July 11, 1975. He signed an affidavit dated September 14, 1975.[^30] He told the committee that he had acted on explicit orders from Helms, and that he believed the 1962 assassination activity carried over from the period when Allen Dulles was Director, a belief he based on what Bissell had told him.[^18]
Harvey said he had not informed the Special Group, or anyone outside the agency, that he had given the poison pills to Roselli. He said he did not brief McCone on the pills because he did not believe it was necessary.[^18]
### Retirement, Death and Aftermath
In April 1967 Harvey was to be transferred from the [[European Division]] to the Office of Personnel, where he would be carried in casual status until his final retirement, and his sick leave required a physician's monthly certification.[^37] By October 30, 1967 he had not yet set a retirement date, and retirement was expected on November 30.[^38] He retired from the agency in 1967.[^29]
In April 1967 Harvey was to be transferred from the [[European Division]] to the Office of Personnel, where he would be carried in casual status until his final retirement, and his sick leave required a physician's monthly certification.[^39] By October 30, 1967 he had not yet set a retirement date, and retirement was expected on November 30.[^40] He retired from the agency in 1967.[^31]
In November 1967, while leaving the agency to practice law, Harvey asked Sam Papich for reputable private investigators. Papich suggested [[Wackenhut Corporation]] or the [[Fidelifax]] Company, as Howard Osborn recorded in a memorandum of November 8, 1967.[^39]
In November 1967, while leaving the agency to practice law, Harvey asked Sam Papich for reputable private investigators. Papich suggested [[Wackenhut Corporation]] or the [[Fidelifax]] Company, as Howard Osborn recorded in a memorandum of November 8, 1967.[^41]
Roselli died in August 1976. On August 11, 1976 [[George H. W. Bush|George Bush]], then Director of Central Intelligence, wrote that calls to Senators had suggested that the CIA was involved in the murder, and that he had asked [[Edward Levi]] to bring the FBI into the case.[^40]
Roselli died in August 1976. On August 11, 1976 [[George H. W. Bush|George Bush]], then Director of Central Intelligence, wrote that calls to Senators had suggested that the CIA was involved in the murder, and that he had asked [[Edward Levi]] to bring the FBI into the case.[^42]
According to the 1976 obituary, Harvey moved to [[Indianapolis, Indiana|Indianapolis]] in 1969 after leaving the agency, and was law editor for [[Bobbs-Merrill]] at the time of his death.[^3]
Harvey died of a heart attack at an Indianapolis hospital on June 9, 1976, at the age of 60. He was buried at South Cemetery in Danville, Indiana, and was survived by his wife, Clara Grace, a daughter and a son.[^3] A CIA memorandum of August 9, 1976 gives the same date, "9 June 1976."[^29] Martin wrote that surgeons had worked four hours to implant an artificial valve and that Harvey died, holding his wife's hand, at ten minutes past two in the afternoon of June 9.[^2] A June 1976 press report named Harvey among ten agents whose identities the Senate committee had disclosed, and said that [[William Colby]] had argued that disclosure endangered agents.[^3] A CIA routing memorandum of June 16, 1976 records that the agency's information on his death came from the press reports.[^41] Martin wrote that Harvey's wife told him reporters were trying to link his death to Roselli's murder, that there had been two attempted break-ins, and that people were "after his papers," to which she said she had "burned everything."[^5]
Harvey died of a heart attack at an Indianapolis hospital on June 9, 1976, at the age of 60. He was buried at South Cemetery in Danville, Indiana, and was survived by his wife, Clara Grace, a daughter and a son.[^3] A CIA memorandum of August 9, 1976 gives the same date, "9 June 1976."[^31] Martin wrote that surgeons had worked four hours to implant an artificial valve and that Harvey died, holding his wife's hand, at ten minutes past two in the afternoon of June 9.[^2] A June 1976 press report named Harvey among ten agents whose identities the Senate committee had disclosed, and said that [[William Colby]] had argued that disclosure endangered agents.[^3] A CIA routing memorandum of June 16, 1976 records that the agency's information on his death came from the press reports.[^43] Martin wrote that Harvey's wife told him reporters were trying to link his death to Roselli's murder, that there had been two attempted break-ins, and that people were "after his papers," to which she said she had "burned everything."[^5]
In June 1977 Martin, an [[Associated Press]] correspondent, asked a retired agency employee for cooperation with a book about Harvey. The employee was irritated and believed that a retired CIA officer had given Martin his name.[^42]
In June 1977 Martin, an [[Associated Press]] correspondent, asked a retired agency employee for cooperation with a book about Harvey. The employee was irritated and believed that a retired CIA officer had given Martin his name.[^44]
### Footnotes
@ -221,18 +223,20 @@ In June 1977 Martin, an [[Associated Press]] correspondent, asked a retired agen
[^25]: Church Committee, *Alleged Assassination Plots*, S. Rept. 94-465, p. 164, and Additional Views of Senator Howard H. Baker Jr., p. 321, quoting Harvey testimony of July 11, 1975, pp. 29-30 and 86. https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/94465.pdf
[^26]: *Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963*, vol. X, doc. 371, Editorial Note on the August 10, 1962 meeting of the Special Group (Augmented), quoting Harvey's memorandum of August 14, 1962 and McCone's memorandum of April 14, 1967. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v10/d371
[^27]: Church Committee, *Alleged Assassination Plots*, S. Rept. 94-465, p. 107 (Walter Elder, McCone's Executive Assistant, on telling Helms of McCone's opposition after the August 10 meeting). https://archive.org/details/allegedassassina00unit
[^28]: Church Committee, *Alleged Assassination Plots*, S. Rept. 94-465, pp. 83-85 (the 1961 assignment and the November 16, 1961 notes; the April 1962 reactivation and "explicit orders"; the poison pills of April 18 and 21, 1962; the $5,000 equipment and the rented truck; the September 1962 meetings; the $2,700 payment; the second team; the February 1963 termination), citing Harvey testimony of June 25 and July 11, 1975, and the affidavit of September 14, 1975. https://archive.org/details/allegedassassina00unit
[^29]: Central Intelligence Agency, memorandum "Johnny Roselli," August 9, 1976. Reading room document 00508811, https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-00508811 (Harvey's operations from early 1962 to February 1963; Harvey as case officer from May 1962; Harvey and O'Connell in contact from 1964 to about 1970; Harvey retired in 1967).
[^30]: Church Committee, *The Investigation of the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy: Performance of the Intelligence Agencies*, Final Report Book V, S. Rept. 94-755, April 23, 1976, pp. 69, 72. https://archive.org/details/ChurchCommittee
[^31]: Church Committee, *Alleged Assassination Plots*, S. Rept. 94-465, p. 105, citing Inspector General's report p. 54 (the June 1963 farewell dinner; FBI observation; Papich's notice to Harvey; Harvey's report to Helms). https://archive.org/details/allegedassassina00unit
[^32]: House Select Committee on Assassinations, *Report of the Select Committee on Assassinations*, H. Rept. 95-1828, 1979, p. 117 (the committee's finding that the plots were not shown to be irrelevant; CIA files on contact with Harvey until 1967). https://archive.org/details/reportofselectco1979unit
[^33]: Church Committee, *Alleged Assassination Plots*, S. Rept. 94-465, pp. 86-87 (Osborn memorandum for the record, December 11, 1967). https://archive.org/details/allegedassassina00unit
[^34]: Church Committee, *Alleged Assassination Plots*, S. Rept. 94-465, p. 149 n. 1, citing Harvey testimony of July 11, 1975, pp. 80-81, and Walter Elder testimony of August 13, 1975, pp. 34-35. https://archive.org/details/allegedassassina00unit
[^35]: Church Committee, *Alleged Assassination Plots*, S. Rept. 94-465, pp. 86-87 (FitzGerald replacing Harvey in January 1963; the diving-suit plan), citing Inspector General's report p. 75. https://archive.org/details/allegedassassina00unit
[^36]: Central Intelligence Agency, memorandum "Appointment of Mr. William K. Harvey Chief of Station, Rome, Italy," June 12, 1963. Reading room document 01228805, https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-01228805
[^37]: Central Intelligence Agency, memorandum for the record "William K. Harvey," April 5, 1967. Reading room document 0001228917, https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-0001228917
[^38]: Central Intelligence Agency, memorandum for the record "William K. Harvey," October 30, 1967. Reading room document 0001228965, https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-0001228965
[^39]: Osborn, Howard J. Memorandum for the record, November 8, 1967, JFK record 104-10133-10076. National Archives, JFK Assassination Records Collection.
[^40]: Bush, George, memorandum "The Death of Roselli," August 11, 1976. Reading room document 00508811, https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-00508811
[^41]: Central Intelligence Agency, routing and record memorandum, June 16, 1976, filed with the reading room copy of the June 1976 press report, https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp79-00498a000600020001-2
[^42]: Central Intelligence Agency, routing and record sheet, "Mr. David Martin, Associated Press Correspondent's Interest in Writing a Book About Mr. William King Harvey," June 27, 1977. Reading room document 0001229025, https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-0001229025
[^28]: *Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963*, vol. X, doc. 366, Memorandum From the Chief of Operations, Operation Mongoose (Lansdale) to the Central Intelligence Agency Operations Officer for Operation Mongoose (Harvey), Washington, August 6, 1962, subject "CIA Draft Operational Plan B+." https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v10/d366
[^29]: *Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963*, vol. X, doc. 377, Memorandum From the Chief of Operations, Operation Mongoose (Lansdale) to the Central Intelligence Agency Operations Officer for Operation Mongoose (Harvey), Washington, August 16, 1962, subject "Actions by Cuban Refugees." https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v10/d377
[^30]: Church Committee, *Alleged Assassination Plots*, S. Rept. 94-465, pp. 83-85 (the 1961 assignment and the November 16, 1961 notes; the April 1962 reactivation and "explicit orders"; the poison pills of April 18 and 21, 1962; the $5,000 equipment and the rented truck; the September 1962 meetings; the $2,700 payment; the second team; the February 1963 termination), citing Harvey testimony of June 25 and July 11, 1975, and the affidavit of September 14, 1975. https://archive.org/details/allegedassassina00unit
[^31]: Central Intelligence Agency, memorandum "Johnny Roselli," August 9, 1976. Reading room document 00508811, https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-00508811 (Harvey's operations from early 1962 to February 1963; Harvey as case officer from May 1962; Harvey and O'Connell in contact from 1964 to about 1970; Harvey retired in 1967).
[^32]: Church Committee, *The Investigation of the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy: Performance of the Intelligence Agencies*, Final Report Book V, S. Rept. 94-755, April 23, 1976, pp. 69, 72. https://archive.org/details/ChurchCommittee
[^33]: Church Committee, *Alleged Assassination Plots*, S. Rept. 94-465, p. 105, citing Inspector General's report p. 54 (the June 1963 farewell dinner; FBI observation; Papich's notice to Harvey; Harvey's report to Helms). https://archive.org/details/allegedassassina00unit
[^34]: House Select Committee on Assassinations, *Report of the Select Committee on Assassinations*, H. Rept. 95-1828, 1979, p. 117 (the committee's finding that the plots were not shown to be irrelevant; CIA files on contact with Harvey until 1967). https://archive.org/details/reportofselectco1979unit
[^35]: Church Committee, *Alleged Assassination Plots*, S. Rept. 94-465, pp. 86-87 (Osborn memorandum for the record, December 11, 1967). https://archive.org/details/allegedassassina00unit
[^36]: Church Committee, *Alleged Assassination Plots*, S. Rept. 94-465, p. 149 n. 1, citing Harvey testimony of July 11, 1975, pp. 80-81, and Walter Elder testimony of August 13, 1975, pp. 34-35. https://archive.org/details/allegedassassina00unit
[^37]: Church Committee, *Alleged Assassination Plots*, S. Rept. 94-465, pp. 86-87 (FitzGerald replacing Harvey in January 1963; the diving-suit plan), citing Inspector General's report p. 75. https://archive.org/details/allegedassassina00unit
[^38]: Central Intelligence Agency, memorandum "Appointment of Mr. William K. Harvey Chief of Station, Rome, Italy," June 12, 1963. Reading room document 01228805, https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-01228805
[^39]: Central Intelligence Agency, memorandum for the record "William K. Harvey," April 5, 1967. Reading room document 0001228917, https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-0001228917
[^40]: Central Intelligence Agency, memorandum for the record "William K. Harvey," October 30, 1967. Reading room document 0001228965, https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-0001228965
[^41]: Osborn, Howard J. Memorandum for the record, November 8, 1967, JFK record 104-10133-10076. National Archives, JFK Assassination Records Collection.
[^42]: Bush, George, memorandum "The Death of Roselli," August 11, 1976. Reading room document 00508811, https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-00508811
[^43]: Central Intelligence Agency, routing and record memorandum, June 16, 1976, filed with the reading room copy of the June 1976 press report, https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-cia-rdp79-00498a000600020001-2
[^44]: Central Intelligence Agency, routing and record sheet, "Mr. David Martin, Associated Press Correspondent's Interest in Writing a Book About Mr. William King Harvey," June 27, 1977. Reading room document 0001229025, https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-0001229025