COVERT ACTION

Generally

To the 1980s

Adler, Emanuel. "Executive Command and Control in Foreign Policy: The CIA's Covert Activities." Orbis 23, no. 3 (Fall 1979): 671-696.

Lowenthal finds "useful insights into the management of covert activities and some of the command and control problems that these activities can create" in Adler's article.

Associated Press. "Taiwanese Spy Plane Pilots Honored for Perilous Cold War Missions." International Herald Tribune, 4 Jul. 2007. [http://www.iht.com]

From 1953 to 1967, the Taiwanese pilots known as "The Black Bats" flew "more than 800 sorties over the Chinese mainland, dropping agents, testing radar responses and collecting air samples from suspected nuclear test sites." At a gathering in June 2007 in Hsinchu, northern Taiwan, "hundreds of Taiwanese observed a minute of silence for the 148 Black Bats who never returned from their missions and paid an emotional tribute to the few surviving members of the group." According to the veterans, "[t]he CIA provided the aircraft [and the training] for the missions.... They proudly display photographs taken with Ray Cline, then the agency's Taipei station chief."

Blackstock, Paul W. The Strategy of Subversion: Manipulating the Politics of Other Nations. Chicago: Quadrangle, 1964. JK468I6B56

According to Pforzheimer, this book covers the "use of subversive techniques to influence the internal affairs of other nations." There are "past and recent historical examples.... In view of the author's biases and the lack of documentation..., the book must be read with caution." Constantinides finds that there is an absence of "meaningful criteria" for evaluating present-day covert operations.

Center for National Security Studies. CIA's Covert Operations vs. Human Rights. Washington, DC: 1977. [Petersen]

Chomsky, Noam, and Edward S. Herman. The Washington Connection and Third World Fascism. Boston: South End Press, 1979.

Petersen says this work deals with "[a]lleged CIA support for anti-democratic elements abroad." According to Blum, NameBase, the case studies presented include "Indonesia (1965-69), Thailand, the Philippines, Vietnam, and the Dominican Republic. The longest case study is that of East Timor. The authors note that the mass killing in that country carried out by Indonesia, beginning in 1975, was comparable to the massacres in Cambodia occurring at the same time, but the Western reactions to the two massacres were markedly different because the Cambodian killings were carried out by Communists, while Indonesia was a U.S. ally."

Church, Frank.

1. "Covert Action: Swampland of American Foreign Policy." Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 52, no. 1 (Jan.-Feb. 1976): 7-11.

2. "Covert Operations." Center Magazine 9 (Mar.-Apr. 1976): 21-25. [Petersen]

Colby, William E. "The CIA's Covert Actions." Center Magazine, Mar.-Apr. 1975, 71-80. [Petersen]

Corke, Sarah-Jane. "George Kennan and the Inauguration of Political Warfare." Journal of Conflict Studies 26, no. 1 (Summer 2006): 98-117.

Corke, Sarah-Jane. U.S. Covert Operations and Cold War Strategy: Truman, Secret Warfare, and the CIA, 1945-53. London: Routledge, 2007.

From publisher: "The book argues that the Truman Administration was unable to reconcile policy, strategy and operations successfully, and to agree on a consistent course of action for waging the Cold War. This ensured that they wasted time and effort, money and manpower on covert operations designed to challenge Soviet hegemony, which had little or no real chance of success."

Dear, James. American Covert Action. Austin, TX: Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, University of Texas, 1976.

Falk, Richard A. "CIA Covert Action and International Law." Society 12, no. 3 (Mar.-Apr. 1975): 39-44.

Falk, Richard A. "President Gerald Ford, CIA Covert Operations, and the Status of International Law." American Journal of International Law 69, no. 2 (Apr. 1975): 354-358.

Ford, Harold P. "Piety and Wit: The Bad Effects of Covert CIA Activity." America, 11 Jan. 1975, 10-11. [Petersen]

Gelb, Leslie H. "Should We Play Dirty Tricks in the World?" New York Times Magazine, 21 Dec. 1975, 10-11 ff.

Halperin, Morton H. "Decision Making for Covert Operations." Society 12 (Mar.-Apr. 1975): 45-51. [Petersen]

Hook, Sidney. "The Strategy of Political Warfare." In Political Power and Personal Freedom: Critical Studies in Democracy, Communism, and Civil Rights, 389-401. New York: Criterion, 1959. [Petersen]

Loory, Stuart. "The CIA's Use of the Press: A 'Mighty Wurlitzer.'" Columbia Journalism Review, Sep.-Oct. 1974.

Riffice, Albert E. "Intelligence and Covert Action." Studies in Intelligence 6, no. 1 (Winter 1962): 73-80.

The author looks at SOE's difficulties in World War II, and concludes that "the root of SOE's difficulties was its lack of coordination with the British espionage and counterintelligence services." At the end of the war, the responsibility for covert operations was returned to the jurisdiction of MI6.

Rositzke, Harry. The CIA's Secret Operations: Espionage, Counterespionage, and Covert Action. New York: Reader's Digest Press, 1977.

Rositzke died on 4 November 2002 at the age of 91. Bart Barnes, "Harry Rositzke Dies; Spymaster, Scholar," Washingtom Post, 7 Nov. 2002, B12.

Clark comment: Rositzke is identified on this book's dust jacket as having served two years with OSS and 25 years with the CIA, where his jobs included work in Munich in the early 1950s, station chief in New Delhi 1957-1962, and Washington assignments until his retirement in 1970.

Pforzheimer notes that the secret operations discussed are "heavily disguised as to places and dates." The author both praises and criticizes, and offers solutions to problems in his concluding chapter.

Constantinides finds that the focus of the book is on Rositzke's "major professional interest: secret operations against the Soviet Union.... His experience of secret operations and reflection give him a special perspective." Nonetheless, there are some "questionable facts and opinions" in the book.

Steinmeyer, Walter. "The Intelligence Role in Counterinsurgency." Studies in Intelligence 9, no. 4 (Fall 1965): 57-63.

The author seeks to outline "the part a civilian clandestine service should take in helping meet" the challenges posed in the U.S. effort to combat Communist-instigated "wars of national liberation."

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