Finally, Devereaux’s brain could not stand it; a dizziness seized his consciousness; he fell asleep without realizing it, because the night was full of bad dreams.
3
R Section had been formed after the Bay of Pigs fiasco in 1961.
President John F. Kennedy was furious at what he considered treacherous incompetency on the part of the Central Intelligence Agency in planning the invasion of Cuba. His fury finally found outlet among a group of former Senate colleagues who were also unhappy with the growing dominance of intelligence by the CIA.
“What’s the point in having an intelligence agency that can neither gather intelligence nor undertake successful covert operations?” the young President had complained at the first no-notes meeting. The three other men who attended were: Senator John VerDer Cook of New York, Senator Thomas McGuire of Massachusetts, and retired Navy Admiral John Stapleton. All were close friends and all had expressed similar distrust of the CIA’s ability to function while it continued to receive undue public attention.
“I think this country needs a good five-cent intelligence operation, one that gathers intelligence and doesn’t plan wars in banana republics,” Stapleton said at the meeting. (The conversations were later recorded by Stapleton in a diary. The diary turned up, somewhat mysteriously, at R Section headquarters shortly after Stapleton’s death in 1971.)
At first, Kennedy suggested revamping the CIA and breaking it into two operations — one for gathering intelligence and a second for planning and executing covert and overt overseas operations.
Stapleton had argued then — and at subsequent meetings — that any attempt to break up the CIA would be disastrous to the young President.
VerDer Cook agreed, adding ominously, “Mr. President, they are very powerful people. They have really…” He hesitated for a moment as he tried to find the words to explain the agency’s power. “They have the secret power that Hoover at the FBI seems to have publicly.”
Kennedy appeared puzzled. For most of his political life, he had revered Hoover and had accepted the myth and substance of his power.
VerDer Cook stumbled on in explanation: “Mr. President. You are aware that Hoover keeps dossiers on… on us. On members of Congress. Undoubtedly, you’ve seen them.”
Kennedy did not bother to deny it. He stared at the young New York senator.
“Sir, those dossiers are child’s play compared to the reality of information at the CIA.”
“Like the information they had before Bay of Pigs?” snapped the President.
“Sir,” VerDer Cook continued doggedly, “I want to give you an example, which you may feel is far-fetched. I would have, too, at one time. It was given to me by a man — now dead, as a matter of fact — whom I considered absolutely reliable and truthful in every way. I cannot tell you his name even now.”
They waited. They were sitting in the ornamental Oval Office of the White House. The President leaned back in his maple rocker and gave VerDer Cook his full attention.
“Remember when the House of Representatives was attacked in 1954? By the Puerto Rican gunmen who had gained access to the visitors’ gallery?”
The question was rhetorical. They all remembered the frightening incident.
“My source was at the Puerto Rican desk at the Agency at that time.”
Kennedy leaned forward in his rocker, his hands folded across his stomach.
VerDer Cook looked down at the rug. “Mr. President, they knew.”
“Knew?”
“They knew. They knew who was going to mount the attack, when it was going to be mounted, how they would get into the gallery — everything, Mr. President.”
Even Stapleton was impressed. “And they told no one?” he asked.
“That decision was made by the CIA Council, sir.”
McGuire interjected: “Not the top man, Jack. The Council. The old hands inside. It was never referred to the top—”
“Why, for God’s sake?” asked John F. Kennedy.
VerDer Cook smiled but it was not in amusement. “To lobby, Mr. President, for expanded funds in the next Congress. To increase surveillance of Puerto Rican terrorist activities and to increase the size of their Caribbean operations—”
“They seemed to have had enough funds—” the President said dryly.
“The money, Mr. President, would be used for other things. The Council inside the Agency reasoned that overt acts against this country would only increase the need for CIA—”
“Crude empire-building,” snapped the President.
“Extremely effective empire-building, Jack,” said McGuire quietly. “The most sophisticated plans are not as important as the crudest plans that are successful. The Council — and the membership in it — is really like a club within a club and keeps changing as some members grow old, retire, die — the Council is really the master of the CIA.”
Again, Kennedy said, “Well, they weren’t so damned smart about Cuba.”
“No,” agreed McGuire.
VerDer Cook said, “And that’s what’s puzzling, sir.”
There was a little silence.
“You mean,” Kennedy began slowly. “You mean they might have sandbagged me?”
“It’s a possibility,” McGuire said.
Kennedy said, “Those men… On my order…”
Stapleton broke through the building tension: “Jack, what these men are telling you is that you have to end-run the CIA to control it. You can’t fight them, and you don’t have to join them. Put the fear of God and the United States back into them—”
“How?”
Stapleton smiled savagely: “Create another agency, to keep them honest.”
Kennedy had not liked the idea but eventually he became convinced of the monolith of power inside the CIA and of the inability of any one man — even an extraordinary President — to control it. And that was where the first suggestion of what became R Section started. VerDer Cook and Stapleton put it down in an “Eyes Only” single-copy memo to the President.
R Section (though it was only called “the alternative agency” in that memo) would be funded out of appropriations buried in research and development within an unlikely department — like the Department of Agriculture (which eventually did become the front for R Section’s funding).
Though an official secret, the agency in fact would be known to the President, obviously to the Secretary of Agriculture, and to the Senate and House committees on intelligence. And, just as naturally, it would be known to the CIA — which was part of its purpose in being. The agency would, indeed, gather information from foreign countries on their agricultural outputs and needs, but there would be other intelligence activities as well. (In fact, R Section successfully predicted the Soviet grain shortages in the early 1970s, but its report was buried in red tape — which eventually led to the infamous grain robbery by the Soviets of U.S. surpluses.)
As Stapleton put it in the memo, the new agency would be the watchdog of the watchdog, the litmus test against which to place CIA findings and evaluate their worth. In effect, the alternative agency would be a freewheeling attempt to compete with the CIA in the matter of general information-gathering — thus spurring the CIA to reveal its treasury of secrets to its own government — before the next Puerto Rican gunmen invaded the chambers of the Congress or before the next Bay of Pigs invasion was planned.
The plan was swiftly and almost secretly approved, and passed routinely through Congress in 1962. For once, the CIA was caught with its clout down; the new agency was in operation before the CIA could mount effective internal opposition to it. Like all things, the establishment of the new agency insured its eternal life in the future budgetary recommendations of Congress.