Theodore Shackley
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Theodore "Ted" Shackley (1927-2002) was an American CIA agent. He was commonly known as the “Blond Ghost” due to his dislike of being photographed, and was involved in many important CIA operations, mostly in the 1960’s / 70s. His work included being station chief in Miami during the period of the Cuban Missile Crisis (Oct 1962), and Operation Mongoose aka "The Cuban Project" (1961 - 1962), which he directed. He was also the director of the controversial "Phoenix Program" during the Vietnam war. He was CIA station chief in Laos, 1966-1968, where he pitted Hmong villagers against Vietcong who used the Ho Chi Minh Trail. He became CIA station chief in Saigon in October 1968 (replacing William Colby), and stayed through February 1972 when he returned to Langley, VA. In 1976, George H.W. Bush appointed Shackley the CIA's Associate Deputy Director for Operations, the #3 post, in charge of worldwide covert operations. He was pushed into retirement by Stansfield Turner in 1979, after associating with Edwin P. Wilson. He worked for Thomas Clines' International Research and Trade, then formed his own company, Research Associates International. He allegedly played a role in the 1980 US presidential election's October surprise. He later became involved in the Iran-Contra Affair. Shackley died on December 9, 2002, after struggling with cancer for a long period. He was 75.
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[edit] Early years
Shackley was born on July 16, 1927, and raised in West Palm Beach, Florida. He joined the U.S. Army in October 1945, eventually becoming part of the Allied Occupation Force in Germany on completion of basic training. Due to his knowledge of the Polish language (his mother was a Polish immigrant), he became a recruit of U.S. Army Counter Intelligence. As an Army recruit he studied at the University of Maryland, and returned to Germany as a 2nd Lieutenant in 1951. Again he served as a member of Army Counter Intelligence, where his linguistic skills were used in the recruitment of Polish Agents. It was at this time that he was recruited by the CIA, and in 1953 he was assigned to work under William Harvey at the CIA’s Berlin Station.
[edit] “Black op’s”
Shackley is perhaps best known for his involvement in numerous CIA “Black operations” (aka “Executive Actions”). These are highly controversial covert operations which, in the case of the CIA (and other “secret service” organizations), involve assassinations, removals, sabotage etc. of foreign governments / heads of state who displease the U.S Government. They can also involve the support of resistance movements who are opposed to the offending Government or Head of State.
[edit] Miami and the Cuban crisis
While heading the CIA office known as "JMWAVE" in Miami, Florida, shortly after the Bay of Pigs invasion, Shackley dealt with operations in Cuba (alongside Edward Lansdale). JM/WAVE employed more than 200 CIA officers, who handled approximately 2,000 Cuban agents. These included the famous “Operation Mongoose” (aka “The Cuban Project”). The aim of this was to "help Cuba overthrow the Communist regime" (of Fidel Castro Ruz). During this period as Miami Station Chief, Shackley was in charge of around 400 agents and general operatives (as well as a huge flotilla of boats), and his tenure here encompassed the "Cuban Missile Crisis" of October 1962.
[edit] Vietnam, Laos and the "Phoenix Program"
In 1966, Shackley moved on to the Vietnam War. Here, he started with directing the CIA’s secret war in Laos. Here Shackley befriended the Hmong opium war-lord Gen. Vang Pao. He then moved on to become station chief for Vietnam (in what was then Saigon) in 1968. Despite popular opinion Shackley did not in fact run the Phoenix Program. This was another assassination campaign incorporating “death squads”, and was aimed at non-combatant Viet Cong infrastructure, but it is alleged that thousands of civilians were killed who had little or nothing to do with the V.C. After the US Bureau of Narcotics' "Operation Eagle" busted a drug-running scheme in 1970, several of the Cuban-Americans involved in the Bay of Pigs came to work for Shackley and Donald Gregg in Vietnam, including Felix Rodriguez. The Phoenix Program was eventually handed over to the U.S. and South Vietnamese armies, and was subsequently considered by both to be a “failure” and counterproductive in terms of producing negative propaganda.
[edit] Western Hemisphere Division and Chile
From 1972, Shackley ran the CIA’s “Western Hemisphere Division”. It was during this time that he played an important role in the overthrow of the democratically elected Salvador Allende Gossens of Chile, and the rise of General Augusto Pinochet Ugarte.
[edit] Other CIA work
One of Shackley’s jobs whilst in charge of the CIA’s Western Hemisphere Division was to discredit ex CIA agent turned KGB, Philip Agee who was writing an “expose” on the CIA entitled “Inside The Company”. After Shackley’s best efforts to discredit Agee, the parts of the book that would have caused most damage to the reputation of the CIA were not included.
[edit] Controversy
In May 1976, Shackley was made Deputy Director of Covert Operations, serving under director George H.W. Bush, and officially he retired from the organization in 1979. However, it has been widely reported that in reality he was forced out of the organization by Bush’s successor as Director, Stansfield Turner. Turner disapproved of Shackley’s close involvement with agent Edwin P. Wilson and ex-CIA employee, Frank Terpil. Wilson was later convicted in 1982 for selling 22 tons of “Composition 4” plastic explosive to Muammar al-Qaddafi’s Libya, and also the charge of exporting guns. The conviction on the explosives charge was reversed on October 29, 2003. However, in the midst of this scandal, Shackley was relieved of his deputy directorship in December 1977, and when the Carter administration announced wide cuts in the CIA’s network of agents and informants, Shackley finally left the Organization.
Despite his retirement in 1979, controversy continued to surround Shackley over alleged involvement in the “October Surprise” of 1980, and later the "Iran-Contra” affair of the mid eighties. He had hoped to return to the Agency, and according to Raphael Quintero, during the 1980 presidential campaign, Shackley met Bush almost every week, and his wife, Hazel, also campaigned for Bush.
[edit] Iran-Contra Affair
On 16th March, 1984, William Francis Buckley, a diplomat attached to the U.S. Embassy in Beirut was kidnapped by the Hezbollah, a fundamentalist Shiite group with strong links to the Khomeini regime. Buckley was tortured and it was soon discovered that he was the CIA station chief in Beirut.
William Casey asked Shackley for help in obtaining Buckley’s freedom. Shackley was horrified when he discovered that Buckley had been captured. Buckley was a member of Shackley’s Secret Team that included Edwin Wilson, Thomas Clines, Carl E. Jenkins, Felix Rodriguez, and Luis Posada Cariles, David Morales, Raphael "Chi Chi" Quintero, Richard L. Armitage, Erich von Marbod, and Harry Aderholt, among others.
Three weeks after Buckley’s disappearance, President Ronald Reagan signed the National Security Decision Directive 138. This directive was drafted by Oliver North and outlined plans on how to get the American hostages released from Iran and to “neutralize” terrorist threats from countries such as Nicaragua. This new secret counterterrorist task force was to be headed by Shackley’s old friend, General Richard Secord. This was the beginning of the Iran-Contra deal.
In November 1985, Shackley traveled to Hamburg where he met General Manucher Hashemi, the former head of SAVAK’s counterintelligence division at the Atlantic Hotel. Also at the meeting on 22nd November was Manuchehr Ghorbanifar. According to the report of this meeting that Shackley sent to the CIA, Ghorbanifar had “fantastic” contacts with Iran.
At the meeting Shackley told Hashemi and Ghorbanifar that the United States was willing to discuss arms shipments in exchange for the four Americans kidnapped in Lebanon. The problem with the proposed deal was that William Francis Buckley was already dead (he had died of a heart-attack while being tortured).
Shackley recruited some of the former members of his CIA Secret Team to help him with these arm deals. This included Thomas Clines, Raphael Quintero, Ricardo Chavez and Edwin Wilson of API Distributors. Also involved was Carl E. Jenkins and Gene Wheaton of National Air. The plan was to use National Air to transport weapons.
On 5th October, 1986, a Sandinista patrol in Nicaragua shot down a C-123K cargo plane that was supplying the Contras. Eugene Hasenfus, an Air America veteran, survived the crash and told his captors that he thought the CIA was behind the operation. This resulted in journalists being able to identify Raphael Quintero and Felix Rodriguez as the two Cuban-Americans mentioned by Hasenfus. It gradually emerged that Thomas Clines, Oliver North, Edwin Wilson and Richard Secord were also involved in this conspiracy to provide arms to the Contras.
[edit] Further reading (including sources)
- Theodore Shackley: The Third Option: An American View of Counter-insurgency Operations McGraw-Hill, (1981) ISBN 0-07-056382-9
- Theodore Shackley: Spymaster: My Life in the CIA (his autobiography, to be published in April, 2005) describe his career. ISBN 1-57488-915-X
- David Corn: Blond Ghost: Ted Shackley and the CIA's Crusades (1994). ISBN 0-671-69525-8
[edit] External links (including sources)
- Historical Militaria obituary for Ted Shackley
- Blond Ghost by David Corn (extensive review of David Corn's Shackley biography)
[edit] The Edwin Wilson Affair
- Opinion on Conviction (PDF) US District Judges opinion on the Wilson Conviction
- The CIA Lied About Edwin Wilson.
- Edwin Wilson: America's Man In The Iron Mask.
