Flawed Patriot Page 30

  As we shall see, some interesting people lived in and around Rome.

  WASHINGTON FAREWELL

  Sometime in mid-1963, some of the Langley basement crowd and a crew of former Berliners memorialized the shafting they all felt Harvey had taken at the hands of their masters. It was a bittersweet farewell party for the enigmatic chief, an occasion to emphasize their enduring loyalty to him and their scorn for the political leaders whom he had dared to defy. Jim Angleton told David Martin years later, Harvey had “lost his self-confidence for the first time in his life!” Angleton, who as a hobby made fishing flies and lures, also “tried to cheer him up by handcrafting a small leather holster for Harvey’s .38 Detective Special.”2

  It was a BOB kind of party—boozy sadness that he was leaving, admiration for what he had accomplished, gallows humor laced with the bravado people of a secret elite share, tall stories, gruff, stifled emotions, overly raucous laughter. There were short, embarrassed speeches of praise and devotion in among the tears of farewell. Their leader had been cut down when he should have been praised for forming and running Task Force W’s global intelligence network under incredible oversight conditions.

  Harvey had done what he was assigned to do, probably better than anyone could have expected. In a few months, his network penetrated Castro’s Cuba and provided the required meat-and-potatoes intelligence. His people’s efforts had produced high-profile stuff, too: reports of the transportation of the intermediate-range ballistic missiles through Havana, precise descriptions of their launching sites, solid material from diplomatic and shipping sources, and Warren Franks’s contacts with Fidel’s sister. But all that was not enough. Harvey had not fully carried out the first family’s impossible, personal mandate, and he had made his disgruntlement profanely obvious.

  Now Harvey was down in flames. At the farewell party, people reached out, in their gruff, boisterous way, trying to drown the depth of their feelings for their leader. No one could rescue him. There were sardonic mementoes: “A stuffed mongoose [in fact, a ferret, since Washington taxidermists apparently did not carry mongooses] and a roll of toilet paper with every sheet stamped ‘PSM.’ … And there were speeches—a satire on Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar in which Harvey was Caesar.”3

  The cashiering of Bill Harvey, even if it was for cause, was sharp confirmation that henceforth, politics was boss. In 1963 the politicization of the Agency was still something new, and something ugly, to the professionals. They knew they were, symbolically, celebrating the last hurrah of the free-wheeling, buccaneering CIA. That Harvey could be humiliated and cashiered because he had—albeit too blatantly—failed to carry out the personal dictates of the nation’s political leadership was a lesson those at the farewell also well understood. The CIA had lost what independence it still held. It had become and would remain a subservient branch of the executive. The lesson was even more blatantly reinforced some years later when Richard Nixon sought to bend the CIA to his own devices.

  Before he left for Rome, though, Harvey did something that was typical of the man and what he stood for. Recall that Peter Karlow probably introduced Bill to CG that Christmastime of 1952. Years later, Karlow was the senior CIA officer hounded by Angleton as the possible KGB mole in the CIA.

  Karlow recalls, “Bill was a lovely person, but he didn’t take any shit from anyone…. When I was having the trouble with Angleton, in 1963 [and later] … and many of the CIA guys were trying to freeze me out, in order to protect the defector, Golitsyn … Bill Harvey went over to the FBI and talked to some of his old friends, then he came back and said to me, ‘They’ve cleared you over there!’” The act was, in itself, one of considerable courage on Bill’s part because it came at a time when CIA officers, even friends of long standing, backed away from each other in suspicion and fear. Harvey stuck by his friends.4

  REASSIGNMENT

  A painful period followed, after Bill “lost his usefulness.” He could not be fired for many reasons, so the CIA had to find something for him to do. Meanwhile, he sat ignominiously twiddling his thumbs for several months in the Langley basement. David Martin notes it was not an easy reassignment. Harvey suggested Laos, but Helms vetoed that one; no more high-profile assignments for Bill. Rome was open and it was a slot that needed someone of Harvey’s rank, but even before Bill left, people wondered audibly about the fit. ‘“They couldn’t have picked a bigger bull for a better china shop,’ one CIA officer snorted….The irony cannot have escaped Harvey that it was he, not Rosselli, … who was being deported to Italy.”5

  Rome was an incongruous assignment for Harvey in so many ways. Even if he refused to show openly how deeply humiliated he felt, there was only a certain degree to which “professionalism” could conceal his remorse, even anger, that he had been removed from cutting-edge operations. On top of that, it would have been hard to put together a worse-matched pair than Harvey and an officer named Mark Wyatt. To this day, while bending over backward to be fair, Wyatt has abundant reason to splutter when he talks of his former boss.

  Wyatt had a long career in intelligence and had the right social credentials. In late 1947, after World War II service in the U.S. Navy, he joined the CIA, having been introduced to the Agency by Senator William Knowland of California.6 He “got to know Bill Colby very well.”7 Mark was now head of the Italian Desk.

  In the winter of 1963 Harvey lurched onto Wyatt’s scene. Even decades later Mark’s resentment is plain. “McCone, the director at the time, had wanted to fire Harvey a couple of times…. McCone was embarrassed….

  “Harvey played McCone terribly well … cleverly … by backing McCone against McNamara on the Castro assassination thing…. Even if he had three martinis, he was no fool. Harvey was an icon in the intelligence community.”

  Wyatt continues, “So Helms called me in and said, ‘Isn’t it great! You’re going to ROME!’ I protested, ‘But, Dick … Paris?’” Wyatt had been angling for a senior job in France; he asked point-blank if Rome was a “directed assignment,” and Helms replied that it was. “It was flattering. Helms said, ‘It was your great friend James Jesus Angleton who suggested it.’ So I said, ‘If Jim feels it’s important, OK.’ Next thing I knew, Angleton said, ‘You’re coming to dinner with Harvey!’”

  Wyatt paused for recall. “Bill was fighting his way back” when he moved into Wyatt’s Langley office for a short time, so he could read in on Italian cases.

  Mark continues, “Bill was always excited. He said, ‘Certain things have to finish after Mongoose.’… Bill thought he handled the Mafia guys terribly well.

  “He would come back after lunch and talk, but then he would say, ‘But that’s all behind me.’ … Rosselli was so close to Bill….

  “So, Bill went out to Rome in 1963. He was wonderful. Couldn’t have been nicer. Italy was a good stock then.”8

  Harvey even helped the Wyatts find housing—“the most beautiful villa on the Appian Way … really sublime!” and a suitable place for official entertaining. “Des FitzGerald came there once and said, ‘What a palazzo!’ But we couldn’t get help to manage the house.”

  Harvey “took over the chief’s house in the American Academy and spent a lot of money redecorating it … in poor taste,” Wyatt thought.

  “He could have been successful. Instead, I was actually running the office most of the time, while he was off in Elba or some place, drying out.

  “David Martin called me years later, but I wouldn’t talk with him.” Wyatt adds that Martin told him, “‘You’ll regret it.’ And I did!” Wyatt exhibited two memos for the record, dated October 10 and 12, 1977, reporting that Martin had exerted “threats and pressure” on him. He was unhappy that Martin, in Wilderness of Mirrors, referred to him as “one of Harvey’s subordinates.” Wyatt: “I wasn’t some little geek, as [Martin] portrayed me in that book!”9

  Tom Polgar comments, “When I heard of Bill’s assignment to Italy, I felt sorry for him…. He was not the bella figura the Italians liked to see. The Rome office w
as well known for its internal feuds and its ongoing battles with James Angleton, who had kept his hands in Italian operations since 1944.

  As Polgar noted, they were not easy fits in the various Rome social circles. The Harvey residence was a handsome museum—not exactly CG Harvey’s down-home style. A sympathetic friend suggests, “Maybe her energy needed an outlet as she saw Bill spiraling down.”

  POINT, COUNTERPOINT

  Years later CG spoke frankly to her Indianapolis church group about the Harveys’ time in Rome. “I spent the three worst years of my life in Italy. Trying to operate on a day-to-day basis. Going to the market every day to buy supplies. I got tired of being cheated.”

  Sally Harvey interrupts her mother’s videotaped monologue. When the family’s furniture arrived from the United States, “it came in the front door, and they were loading it onto another truck out the back!” The Harvey’s cook stole from them and had to be fired. Two or three others came and went. Finally the first chef was rehired and stayed because CG had his number.

  Life was colorful.

  One time, they shut our water off. We were being asked to pay 2,000 lire [a little over $3.00] a day for water! Next day I sent to Sears for a pump and some water pipe and a lot of hose. I plugged into the [Roman] aqueduct, and we got our water. So, OK, we had to boil it five times to get rid of the amoeba, but we did it! … We didn’t get caught, and we ran the local water merchant out of business! …

  There was a Communist compound close to our residence. They kept rats in cages, and would throw them over our walls, labeled ‘LBJ.’ We had rats climbing the dining room table. Bill was in Washington. He left me to deal with the rats and the Communists.

  Some of their people came over and said they wanted to talk. I ran and got Bill’s elephant gun out of its case. You should have seen them scatter!!

  Driving to the [American military] commissary, we used a road that was two thousand years old. On the way back one day, a bunch of gypsies came down to steal and to grab Sally as a hostage. Jim was sixteen at the time. He was beating on some guy and hanging onto Sally at the same time. Just then a busload of priests came up behind us, and away the gypsies went. Sally was scared.

  Watching the tape, Sally added that CG drove the family’s big, white American Ford station wagon in Rome’s narrow streets and always needed help to extricate herself, until she was finally assigned a chauffeur.10

  OTHER VIEWS

  It’s understandable that Bill felt isolated in Rome. He organized the assignment of a friendly face, that of Henry Woodburn, who had been the key BOB inside case officer on the Tunnel. Henry came to Rome to serve as Harvey’s operations officer.

  “Bill was restless. He got along well enough professionally with the Italians, who respected him for his accomplishments. But he never learned any Italian. He would say, ‘If you guys’d learn German, we could talk!’ Which, of course, was more than partly a jest because Harvey’s German never improved, even to conversational level.”

  Woodburn adds that in addition to his other problems in Rome “Harvey [predictably] did not get along with the ambassador, who was old-school Foreign Service…. Wives wore gloves and hats; cards were dropped on visiting days, with corners turned down, etc. Bill didn’t bother to conceal his contempt.

  “Rome was not a happy assignment for Bill…. He could be very impressive when he wanted to be, but Italy was a different world for him…. relaxed, whereas Bill was intense. Rome had only light operational responsibility. He should have geared down, but wasn’t really capable of doing so.

  “He was an ops man.”11

  Bill did have a few vest-pocket ops into Africa, which, according to Woodburn, did not pose a conflict of interest with the division to which he was nominally assigned, Western Europe. It’s likely the cases had to do with Division D matters. Mark Wyatt comments, “Bill had an agent in deepest, darkest Africa. He saw this black man…. He talked about needing some place very secure to meet him…. A man who could be terribly important in Africa.”

  As I was digging, I heard a rumor that Woodburn had become so upset at Bill’s decline that he wrote an eyes-only letter to the top brass urging that Harvey be withdrawn from Rome, for his own, as well as the service’s, good. When I asked Woodburn point-blank, he emphatically said he had not written nor sent any such dispatch.

  HARVEY, STAY-BEHIND OPS, AND SICILY

  Harvey’s tour in Rome took place during one of the chilliest periods of the Cold War. Beginning in the early 1950s, when the United States was preparing for Communist takeover or, indeed, a Soviet invasion of Western Europe, one of the important aspects of planning was the establishment of stay-behind teams to conduct clandestine operations against the occupiers. Mark Wyatt was the officer responsible for these teams.

  Wyatt: “Overall, the stay-behind operation was a terrific success … a delight…. We did the training in Sardinia. Bill came over a few times, and drank a great deal.”

  But Italian officialdom did not hold sway in all areas. It is entirely plausible that the CIA and the Mafia found common interest in preparing guerrilla resistance, should the country fall to the Communists. It would have been renewal of a partnership that went back to World War II.

  Wyatt: “I have reason to believe that Bill traveled to Sicily….

  “Once, when he had to come back [from Sicily at great speed] the Mafia gave him a carved wooden symbol to put on the front of the car, which guaranteed him free and quick passage. He definitely did not want to be tailed on that trip.”12 Wyatt seemed to be describing the figure also mentioned by CG, which was even recognized by Sicilian traffic policemen.

  FIRING WYATT

  Harvey abhorred the celebrities who hung around Hollywood on the Tiber. Wyatt again: “Orson Welles, Gina Lollobrigida, Sophia Loren, Ingrid Bergman. The consul general shoved them all on to me.” Nor did Bill fare well with the diplomats in the embassy. Wyatt: “Ambassador Rinehart didn’t like Bill, and he suggested that I come to the staff meetings.”

  “Bill kept a bottle of Campari and a bottle of gin in his desk…His secretary, Cleo, was very concerned.

  “When he went down the Via Veneto for lunch, the waiters, who knew him, would say, ‘vienne el Shariffo!’” Italian officials also commented on Bill’s drinking.

  Then, “Rolfe Kingsley, the chief of WE [the Western Europe Division], came over to visit” on a routine tour of stations under his command. One day Wyatt stopped Kingsley in the hall to discuss a great fitness report Harvey had given him. The discussion made Kingsley late for an appointment with Bill.

  “Kingsley was scared to death of Harvey…. I mean, he actually turned white when he saw him….

  “Harvey erupted. ‘I’ll not tolerate this kind of thing behind my back!’

  “Later, Harvey said to me, ‘I understand you want to leave.’

  “‘Yes, sir!’

  “‘Goddamit, you’re staying. You can’t leave after just two years!’” Harvey then quickly reversed himself: “OK, if you really want to leave, I’m giving you thirty days to pack up.” The family had three children in school. Such a rapid transfer would cause major problems.

  Why did Harvey flare up that day? “Because I went behind his back!”

  Wyatt took care to tell Desmond FitzGerald, who was deputy director of plans (DDP) at the time, his side of the affair. “I want it clear in the record that there’s no stigma attached to my leaving within thirty days!”

  Jack Whitten, alias John Scelso, in testimony to the House Select Committee on Assassinations:

  A: Harvey cracked up in Rome.

  Q: In what way?

  A: He became practically paranoid, turned on his officers, threatened to have them ruined. One of his very best officers came home and was going to join my staff and told me the whole story. I do not remember the man’s name. An outstanding operations officer…. He could not stand Harvey any more and asked for a transfer…. Harvey refused, [and] said he was going to give him a bad fitness report and have him
fired and so on.

  Later on, Desmond FitzGerald came out on TDY and heard some of these stories and relieved Harvey. Harvey went [portion illegible] completely—which happens in the Agency. The strain is tremendous.13

  ROMAN NADIR

  Sam Halpern saw Bill only once after Task Force W, when he was on a National War College trip to Europe, in 1966. Sam slipped the tour and stayed over in Rome. He, Woodburn, and Bill had a lunch at Bill’s favorite Italian restaurant. “He was drinking heavily.

  “Then Des FitzGerald went over and yanked him.”14

  George Bailey, an ex-Berlin CIA man and a distinguished writer, saw Bill in Rome and privately told friends that Harvey was out of control.

  Dave Murphy, by that time chief of the Eastern Europe Division, saw Harvey from time to time, too. “He would arrive in Frankfurt for division chiefs’ meetings totally blasted….

  “When I saw him in Rome, what got me was, I’d talk with Bill like we did in the old days. [Dave still considered Bill his mentor.] I’d ask, ‘How should we run this case?’ And where before, he’d discuss it in detail, in Rome, he had no ideas. He only wanted to talk about the old days … the tunnel.”15