Cloak and Dollar.

Counterintelligence Book Review By CI Centre Professor Hayden B. Peake Con-Men At The Top? Cloak and Dollar: A History of American Secret Intelligence By Rhodri JEFFREYS-JONES (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002) 357 pp., endnotes, bibliography, index. In this, his latest assault on American intelligence, Rhodri JEFFREYS-JONES—professor of American history at the University of Edinburgh—argues that in America there is a “special reason why secret intelligence has tended to run amok with taxpayers’ money... the emergence, within intelligence circles, of the confidence man.” Using “smooth talk, hyperbole, deception…” the “American spy… has played a leading part” in the creation of “menaces and crises that were by no means always what they seemed to be. They have ranged from Confederate assassination plots to Western land fraud, from white slavery to communism, from German sabotage to Chinese espionage, from crack cocaine scares to digital encryption.” This view is in part provocative, misleading, deceptive and untrue. The author’s confidence man role model is Civil War detective Allan PINKERTON who, we are told, “was dismissed from Abraham LINCOLN’s intelligence service for exaggerating enemy strength. In an attempt to reingratiate himself with the president, PINKERTON warned of an assassination plot.” For the record, LINCOLN never had an intelligence service and PINKERTON was not dismissed from anything. Furthermore, PINKERTON warned the president about the assassination plot before his inauguration, not after. And both of these events occurred before he made any enemy strength assessments. He did offer his services to LINCOLN after the inauguration but never received a response. PINKERTON served General McCLELLAN and quit when his boss was relieved after Antietam, in 1862, never to return to Washington officialdom. In short, PINKERTON was a detective and did little for the intelligence profession beyond embellishing his memoirs with exaggerated often fictitious exploits.[1] Although off to a troubling start, nothing diminishes the author’s unrelenting attachment to PINKERTON and his putative legacy¾he appears throughout the book. This is as difficult to understand as his assertion that William “DONOVAN had become the new PINKERTON”¾a truly an odious comparison. History is challenged further when he claims that “Allan PINKERTON put espionage on a professional basis.” There are far better candidates for this distinction starting with George WASHINGTON. JEFFREYS-JONES dismisses with gross distortions the formative contributions of DONOVAN and J. Edgar HOOVER on this point. In any case, if credit is to be assigned for that contribution, others deserve it, not PINKERTON. The FBI does not escape attention and the author consistently fails to distinguish between the half of the organization concerned with investigating crime and the portion formed much later, concerned with espionage. The FBI’s predecessor, the Bureau of Investigation (BI), is identified in the book as an “emblematic secret intelligence” agency “formed in 1908.” In fact, the BI took that name in March 1909 and before that time there was only a group of federal investigators headed by a Chief Examiner, Stanley FINCH. He became Chief of the BI in 1909, when no part of it was an intelligence agency. The JEFFREYS-JONES comment that ”FBI Chief Stanley W. FINCH insisted that no daughter, wife, or mother was safe from ‘white slavery’ gangs…” is out of context to say the least. FINCH, of course, was never Chief of the FBI. The “White Slave” controversy of 1910 was investigated by FINCH’s BI in its capacity as a federal police organization charged with investigating and prosecuting crime. Its involvement with espionage began during WWI and even then was not its major responsibility. The implicit equating of the BI and later the FBI criminal investigation activities and their intelligence operations distorts and misrepresents the legacies of both. In a remarkable chapter entitled “U-1—The Agency Nobody Knew,” Prof. JEFFREYS-JONES departs, without explanatory comment, from his “con-man” theme to argue that the State Department once controlled American intelligence through an “agency without a name…formed in 1915” that “flourished briefly and dominated the intelligence scene before the FBI finally made its mark. Insiders referred to it simply as U-1.” There is more: U-1 was so obscure and so secretive that it did not even have to try to suppress the news of its existence….It was elitist and snobbish, intellectual and quiet. It was also in some ways effective, and an emblem of how American secret intelligence might be organized in the future. Yet ominously for the quieter mode of espionage, U-1 was dissolved in 1927…. The appellation U-1 stems from terminology introduced following WWI (p. 60). As Prof. JEFFREYS-JONES himself acknowledges, what became U-1 after the war was set up as a coordinating element within the State Department. For reasons not clear, he attaches organizational powers to it far beyond what he is able to document. The other elements of American intelligence during WWI¾the Army’s MID, and Navy’s ONI, the BI, and the Secret Service, were in no sense subordinate to U-1, an interpretation one might reasonably infer from his assertions. Nor can U-1 be considered dominant in any sense of that word. The State Department did run agents in Russia, but so did MID. U-1’s official demise in 1927 came about from its inability to even coordinate intelligence effectively.[2] Despite occasional admissions of a “deserved reputation for past successes,” JEFFREYS-JONES hammers away at his agenda chronicling the familiar failures of intelligence in chapters on DULLES and the CIA, the Bay of Pigs, Vietnam, Watergate, and Iran-Contra. While the basic facts are correct, JEFFREYS-JONES views each as the logical consequence of a “tradition of hyperbole and spin” rather than unsuccessful, if in some cases cockamamie, attempts to implement Presidential policies aimed at countering Soviet Cold War realities, or just plain security failures. There are also comments on the Church Committee hearings that created “a new atmosphere of trust,” and some recent counterintelligence cases--AMES and briefly, HANSSEN--though NICHOLSON and PITTS are excluded. Returning to his central theme, we learn that the DCI’s were not the sole advocates of the “PINKERTON legacy”. Recent presidents also encouraged the con-man tradition. Ronald REAGAN, became a player according to JEFFREYS-JONES when he “told the American people” to trust him “to twist the truth in your interest.” The words are JEFFREYS-JONES’, not REAGAN’s. President CLINTON too, played along writes the author, though “he was not so much hooked by the Agency as sold on it.” Or as his quote of Washington Post columnist Mary McGORY puts it, CLINTON “dares not lift a finger against the spooks.” All this will surprise many who served during the CLINTON years. In the current post Cold War era “the CIA and its siblings” are portrayed as the heirs of the con-man tradition underpinning what the author calls “the real American Century,” the 21st century, as described by the “Cold War triumphalists.” An additional bonus came, he adds, with the events of September 11, 2001, which created a “custom made” situation “for the intelligence confidence man and his political allies.” Once again, writes Prof. JEFFREYS-JONES, came the cries to “unleash the CIA. Once again it was tempting to reward failure….” The source of the “cries” is not given, the source of the conclusion is obvious. With these deeply held views, this history of American intelligence ends on a note calling for “the United States intelligence community to become more a part of the wider world that has inspired and continued to invigorate the great nation of immigrants.” Some in America would argue that goal was achieved long ago. If the distorted unbalanced assessment of American intelligence presented by Prof. JEFFREYS-JONES stimulates constructive discussion of all points of view, it will serve a useful purpose. But as a stand alone survey of the role of intelligence in America and the world, it is a gross disservice. The students deserve better and so does American history. [1] For more on PINKERTON’s contribution, see Edwin C. FISHEL, The Secret War for the Union: The Untold Story of Intelligence in the Civil War (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1996). [2] The documentation given by JEFFREYS-JONES for the creation of U-1 is slim. Endnote # 3, page 299 gives a clue citing a Frank POLK diary entry for 16 June 1916, and adding that “A more extensive treatment of U-1… is in JEFFREYS-JONES’, American Espionage…” though there is nothing there that documents its creation further. On page 79 of this book, the official end of U-1 is noted quoting a memo from the Secretary of State. U-1 is mentioned in Christopher ANDREW’s For The President’s Eyes Only (p. 37) where the associated endnote indicates it was formed in 1916; the same diary entry given by JEFFREYS-JONES is cited. George O’TOOLE also mentions U-1, but cites JEFFREYS-JONES American Espionage as his source. Neither reference indicates that U-1 “dominated the intelligence scene” or was elitist and snobbish.” http://www.cicentre.com/BK/BOOKS_Peake_Jeffreys-Jones.html