Communist Web Saturday 22nd April 2000 9.30pm gmt Book by former CIA agent reveals its dark history Deadly Deceits: My 25 Years in the CIA, by Ralph W. McGehee, 1999, Ocean Press, Melbourne, New York For those who think they know all the machinations and deceits of the Central Intelligence Agency, Deadly Deceits: My 25 Years in the CIA will come as a surprise; "cleverness" is not part of the picture here. Author Ralph McGehee started out with the organization which was to shape his adult life, almost as a lark. A recent college graduate with little idea what he wanted to do, McGehee responded to the inquiries of a strange man who approached him about "working for his country." The Cold War was gathering steam and McCarthyism was still in force. America was "at war" with its nemesis, "the international communist conspiracy." What could be more noble than to "gather intelligence" on the enemy, to work actively toward the establishment of "the American way of life." What McGehee could not have known at the time, and what his book makes amply clear, is that "gathering intelligence" had little to do with his function as a field agent of the CIA. After years of a growing disillusionment, he came to the conclusion the primary function of the agency was to serve as an arm of the executive branch as an implementer of foreign policy, mostly in covert operations, hidden from public view. His assessments of his superiors in the agency sounds like the cynical ruminations of an underling who has been held back from advancement for political reasons. Consider his view of William Colby as "an unprepossessing, mild-mannered man you would never notice in a crowd ... when he talked to you, he devoted his entire attention to you and his eyes always seemed to express his understanding ... this was obviously one of the reasons he rose in the Agency ... In the years hence I have watched him when I knew he was lying, and not the least flicker of emotion ever crosses his face. He comes across as completely honest and believable - a remarkable talent." The moment of truth came when McGehee, fresh from intelligence- gathering victories in Thailand, where he had successfully worked with local authorities to glean information about "communist" insurgents active in the hill country, presented his methods as a model of what could be done in Vietnam. Much to his surprise and disheartenment, they were rejected. Why, he wondered, would the Agency reject methods which had proven so successful in his operation? This question forms the crux of McGehee's growing disenchantment, not only with the CIA, but with the general machine of propaganda of which it was a part. "It was only years later," he writes, "that the truth slowly began to dawn on me: while the survey revelations demonstrated the strategy and composition of an Asian rural revolution and produced a method to contain it in Thailand, the opposite was true in Vietnam - the surveys could have shown there that... http://www.billkath.demon.co.uk/cw/bookby/bookby.html
