Deadly Deceits: My 25 Years in the CIA by Ralph W. McGehee

Author:Ralph W. McGehee [McGehee, Ralph W.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 978-1-4976-8939-8
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 1983-07-01T16:00:00+00:00

9. HEADQUARTERS: GHOSTS IN THE HALLS

WHEN I arrived back at Headquarters from Thailand in late 1967 to begin processing for my new assignment as branch chief on Taiwan, I found out that the assignment had been cancelled. [One 22-word sentence deleted.] I realized that I had been set up by Rod Johnson and Dave Abbott. The dispatch offering me the job of branch chief on Taiwan was a ruse to get me out of Thailand. When it didn’t work, Johnson had just told me to go. This deception was an added shock to my already confused state of mind, and I set out to “walk the halls” to look for another assignment. I was apathetic, and in light of all that had happened I was having a difficult time justifying my previously idealistic view of the Agency.

One day the head of China activities offered me a desk job of no real import. I didn’t give a damn about the job. My prior tours with China activities indicated that everything there was more shadow than substance. But I was too demoralized to refuse.

The essential personality characteristic necessary to survive the daily minutiae of China activities was patience. Things happened at a snail’s pace. You had to slowly digest, regurgitate, and re-digest unimportant information, while pretending to be enthralled by the process. You had to defend vehemently your position on trivia. You had to play the game.

With another case officer I shared an office that had a view of the American flag waving outside. I spent a lot of my time with my feet propped up on the desk looking out the window, ruminating about the Agency, the country, the flag, and what it all meant. I had plenty of time to kill, and so did a lot of others in the same boat. Frequent office bull sessions reminded me of my sophomore days at Notre Dame. Sometimes a few of us would continue the discussions on a coffee break in the cafeteria. This was good for killing about an hour. Lunch entailed a trip to the cafeteria or to nearby McLean, culminating with a long stroll around the Headquarters building that used up at least another hour and a half.

The corridors in China activities gave you the feeling that time had stopped. Ghosts of case officers past roamed the halls, carrying pieces of paper that gave purpose to their eerie missions. The noon hour found the corridors totally empty except for a lone secretary or a true believer.

But every day did bring a few cables and dispatches from China units scattered around the world. Most such documents noted the efforts of the case officers to spot and assess people with access to Chinese officials serving overseas.[1] China activities had begun to realize the near impossibility of recruiting a Chinese official to be our spy. To keep busy and to show progress, the Agency had now developed programs to recruit contacts of these officials.

At one point I was given the task of trying to plan how to recruit a member of the Chinese diplomatic installation.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.