Talk:CIA activities in Asia and the Pacific

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[edit] Pre-1952 activities generally (Operation JACK specifically)

In general, speaking of CIA field operations before 1952 is marginal or incorrect, as those capabilities were not fully part of part of the CIA. Field operations were in the semi-autonomous OPC (covert action) and OSO (clandestine intelligence) until Director of Central Intelligence Walter Bedell Smith created the "Directorate of Plans" in 1952, and put these functions under unified command.

Sometimes, just wikilinking to another article, without checking the references already in the text of the article at hand, may lead to inaccuracies.

Please see what is now reference 6:

The Operation JACK page, which is a stub, is not completely accurate, as it mixes military and CIA missions. If you read the Clandestine Services history of Korea, you will see what often was a conflict between the military and OSS/SOE, and later CIA, when military commanders would want to task national intelligence assets for essentially tactical missions. See Clandestine HUMINT and Covert Action for a more detailed discussion of US and British experience in this area.

While there indeed were some CIA or predecessor operations in the Korean War, it was more difficult when MacArthur still commanded. MacArthur had refused to let the OSS operate in his theater during WWII, and did not especially want any units not under his direct control in Korea. After he left, things became somewhat easier. Eventually, there was a geographic split of Korea for guerilla operations, but CIA remained principally responsible for clandestine intelligence collection while the military was principally responsible for pilot recovery. I should make the point that the South Koreans had independent (and coordinated) units doing both.Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 14:22, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

Hi Howard, can you revise Operation Jack page with above info and contextualize my link to JACK page on this page? Thanks, Erxnmedia (talk) 14:36, 3 January 2008 (UTC)
Please do not take this as a challenge, as it's not intended to be one. I am reluctant to keep revising pages that are essentially stubs, and not always correct. Indeed, I'm not always correct -- I misread JACK as CCRAK.Let me start by clarifying some terminology. In 1950, there were two organizations that were semi-independent of CIA, the Office of Special Operations for clandestine intelligence gathering, and the Office of Policy Coordination for covert action including guerilla warfare. There was a CIA Mission to Korea that was a coordinator in a real sense, not the OPC sense. OPC and OSO had multiple reporting systems, but it was not until 1952 that the Director of Central Intelligence could give them orders (through the newly established Directorate of Plans) rather than suggestions. One other thing to be considered is that United States Army Special Forces, which now would handle the Army part of guerilla warfare, also was not formed until 1952 and its initial foreign deployments were to Germany (10th Special Forces Group), so Special Forces had no role in the Korean War.
Having done some further research, I checked a website, http://www.psywarrior.com/KoreaPSYOPHist.html, I usually find quite accurate, who says:
  • 8240th Army Unit was the Army guerilla command
  • Two things called CCRAK, much like the Vietnam-era unclassified name was "Studies and Observation Group" really the "Special Operations Group".
    • unclassified name: Combined Command Reconnaissance Activities, Korea (CCRAK).
    • classified designation, "Covert, Clandestine, and Related Activities – Korea," which was supposed to be the joint CIA/OSO/OPC organization.
  • JACK was a cover name for the CIA HUMINT group that OSO created after FECOM G2 became involved (see below). JACK does not appear as a term in the Clandestine Services history, but the function seems to have be present as a HUMINT group not under CCRAK.
Reading both this site and the CS history, it appears that CCRAK worked as long as Eighth Army Operations was the Army side, but things got into trouble when Far East Command Intelligence (FECOM G2) took over the Army role. At this point, my opinion is that JACK may have been a cover name for the OSO unit created after FECOM G2 took over. I'm not sure, and would want to search for more source material.
My question to you would be if it really is useful to have this discussion in two places, which would seem to be the result of putting it into the CIA/Asia-Pacific and the JACK article. JACK, in any case, seems to have been a part of a much larger whole, and I'm not sure it should have its own articles.
SHAMROCK and MINARET are even more problematic, since they were NSA operations with which CIA and several other agencies worked; I'm not all that sure they belong as paragraphs in the CIA/Americas article, any more than literally thousands of other NSA information flows to CIA belong in the CIA article.
I'm still appalled that there seem to be CIA Covert Action, US Regime Change, CIA history, and probably even more articles, some NPOV and some very much POV that the US and/or CIA are the Dark Forces (a Soviet term) that did nothing but try to change regimes.

It can be argued that the whole Korean War was sort of an attempt to change the DPRK regime. For that matter, a Special Forces unit on what is formally an Unconventional Warfare mission is trying to change a regime (or at least hurt it), and the CIA may not even be involved. Even more complex are cases like Afghanistan, where CIA Special Activities Division paramilitary teams made the initial deniable contacts, and then were complemented or replaced by Special Forces working with the Northern Alliance.

In other words, I see far too many articles and would like to see more consistency and simplification (but not oversimplification)

Your thoughts? Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 20:36, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Variety of sources

There are a great many references to Weiner's book, in an area where a huge amount of sources exist. I'm willing to look up some of the literature, which, in the case of the Vietnam War and surrounding conflict, is very significant with respect to the CIA: below the Director level, there was a constant battle among CIA analysts, McNamara's staff, and MACV intelligence. One of the best book references on this is Sam Adams' War of Numbers; Adams was a CIA analyst who left in protest of the working-level analysis being changed to meet White House and Pentagon expectations.

Now declassified are a number of sharply critical articles in the CIA journal, Studies in Intelligence. The CIA FOIA reading room has a lot of content, but I cannot figure out how to make their document viewer show more than half a page at a time, unless I print the output. Anyone have a workaround? I suppose I can print to file and read there.

The Pentagon Papers, even just the 4 out of 47 volumes, has reasonable material, and a fair bit of MACV reporting has been declassified. Unfortunately, while I remember a lot of good data in the now-declassified "MACV Lessons Learned" series, I have absolutely no idea where they might be found and referenced. Anyone have suggestions?

I'm not singling out Weiner, but my strong preference is not to have the appearance of any one person's work being the major reference for complex situations. My own practice is as I enter things, I either want to have more than one source in hand, or at least to go back, after other editors have added potential sources, and research further. Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 00:48, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Hi Howard,

I am mostly to blame for all of the Weiner references. It is a very entertaining book. However, the CIA rebuttal goes a long way towards putting his book into question, and the author of the rebuttal says it would take him 600 pages to document every one of Weiner's mistakes. I'll take his word for it, 85%. For a sense of where the other 15% may be (i.e. the 15% where "the media" is right in questioning the CIA), take look at the article by Lawrence Wright in the January 21 2008 New York where he is interviewing the current DNI, Mike McConnell. A lot of the time, McConnell is very convincing. In many of those cases, Wright's asides seriously undermine McConnell's level of convincingosity.

In any event, Weiner's book is on the shelf and I have 4 more books to read, Ghost Wars, Charlie Wilson's War and the two Chad books, so if I see any intriguing factoids in those books, I'll be tempted to type them in (if not do the work of finding corroborating sources).

Thanks,Erxnmedia (talk) 04:23, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

In no way do I suggest the media is wrong in questioning intelligence agencies. While it tends to be read only by specialized audiences, an industry magazine such as Aviation Week and Space Technologies asks some very hard questions about the technical collection systems. Still, I find many of the mainstream media reporters have a pack mentality, and will create controversy when none really exists. There are exceptions. Wolf Blitzer, when he was on the military assignments, would actually read the manuals on things, and, very politely, back people into corners.
Not knowing the exact ground rules for press conferences in Iraq, I am amazed that no reporter has gotten the background briefing to have asked the military, mostly speaking on background, on exactly what they mean by "explosively formed projectiles," for which many accusations are cast at Iraq. You see, EFP can cover technologies of the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries. I could put together working versions of the first two here in the basement workshop, although I'd prefer not to have to mix my own explosives.
You will make a real contribution with the Chad books. I'm not at all surprised, given the relationship between France and Chad, that the best references are French.
If you have the chance, do take a look at Heuer's and Johnston's books (online) on the discipline of intelligence analysis. Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 04:33, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
OK, I'll read Heuer and Johnston too! By the way one of the two Chad books is in English and from University of Virginia, and only has 4-5 very vague items in it about CIA, but it is good for straightening out Chad history. Also I'm going to probably add some tidbits from the New Yorker article on McConnell (a must-read) to your HUMINT article, feel free to cancel/correct. Thanks, Erxnmedia (talk) 12:22, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
Great! I don't have the historical sense of McConnell that I do of some of the less recent directors. I would note that he was the Joint Chiefs of Staff intelligence officer during the 1990-1991 Gulf War, visible as a frequent briefer at press conferences, but he has been credited, in technical journals, with personally figuring out some ways of improving information flow from the intelligence agencies to the fighters in the field. I'll have to rememember where I saw that and perhaps add it to his biography, as it apparently was considered an exceptional contribution, and willing to change the rules and bureaucracy when they didn't make sense. My guess is that he got onto a fast track for promotion after that; 1 star in 1991 to 3 stars in the last couple of years, as an intelligence specialist, is fairly fast. He apparently bypassed some people with more time in grade when getting promoted, and the officer of whom I'm thinking was cleared of misconduct for Abu Ghraib, but, had she been in a Scottish court, they might have used their traditional alternative verdict of "not proven". Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 16:31, 18 January 2008 (UTC)