In Search of Enemies - A CIA Story - John Stockwell

[238] IN SEARCH OF ENEMIES
of all CIA field case officers already are well known in their local
communities because of their liaison relationships with foreign police,
their own open admissions of CIA identities, their free-wheeling,
high-profile life-styles, and the gossip and conspicuous clannishness
of their wives. In Abidjan, my first post, all CIA station
personnel were listed in the ef!lbassy's unclassified, public telephone
book as the "Political II Section." "Political I" was legitimate State
Department personnel.
No one has been killing CIA case officers because no one cares to.
The Soviets, Chinese, and even the North Koreans, like the CIA, do
not want the intelligence world to be complicated by James Bondtype
behavior. It isn't done. If a CIA case officer has a fiat tire in the
dark of night on a lonely road, he will not hesitate to accept a ride
from a KGB officer-likely the two would detour to some bar for
a drink together.* Terrorists are not going to waste suicidal missions
on U.S. embassy second secretaries, even if they are CIA. Terrorism
requires dramatic targets: an Israeli Olympic team, an OPEC minister,
a 747 jetliner, or at least an ambassador or consul general.
In Athens the CIA station was huge, and most of its personnel
were well known in the local community. Its case officers, especially
Welch and his predecessors, had separate offices in the embassy and
passed the same residences to generations of successive case officers.
Athens's chiefs of station had always been identified to a procession
of changing Greek officials, and they had meddled in the violent
crises of Cyprus, the Arab-Israeli conflicts, and in Greece itself. The
significant point is not that Welch died as he did, but that other case
officers before him and since were never hurt in any of these wars
and coups.
After Welch's death the Church Committee ran out of support. It
published its final report in April 1976, but the CIA was permitted
to edit that report before it was released. The Pike Committee report
on the CIA was completely suppressed. (Although subsequently
leaked to Daniel Schorr who had it conveyed to the Village Voice in
New York.)
In July 1977, when the House of Representatives established an
oversight committee to help keep the CIA in line, the agency im·
*In fact CIA and KGB officers entertain each other frequently in their homes. The
CIA's files are full of mention of such relationships in almost every African station.