-Caveat Lector-
THE FORTY COMMITTEE
by L. Fletcher Prouty
[cont'd]
When the CIA was created, soon after World War II, the law
(the National Security Act of 1947) stated clearly what its
duties were to be. There are five. The first four are clearly
above-board intelligence functions. It is the fifth duty that
opens the door to clandestine operations:
"--to perform such other functions and duties related to
intelligence affecting the national security as the National
Security Council may from time to time direct."
This is the exact language of the law. This is the law
today, and despite countless efforts by the CIA to have us
believe otherwise, this is the only law that properly lists the
duties of the CIA.
It has not been changed -- and it has not been augmented.
The CIA would like to have us believe that it has the right
to perform clandestine activities. It does not have this
authority in law -- unless it is directed by the National
Security Council to perform such an activity. Even then the law
is most explicit: it adds, "from time to time ..." As when the
CIA is authorized to perform one clandestine operation, that
authority does not carry over to another.
The law further limits the CIA by saying "As the National
Security Council may ... direct." In such important matters
there is a vast difference between "direct" and "authorize."
When the NSC "directs," that means that the highest authority in
the country has originated the idea, approved it and resolved to
carry it out. When the NSC believes that the plan must be
carried out, and only then, the NSC "directs" that it be done.
And the NSC has the authority to direct ANY agency -- not
just the CIA.
After Allen Dulles had been appointed Director of the CIA by
President Eisenhower, he began a deft campaign to water down this
prescribed process. Working in conjunction with his brother John
Foster Dulles, who was then Secretary of State, Allen Dulles put
his proposal in the following terms: because the members of the
NSC are the busiest people in Washington, because they have the
cares of the world on their shoulders, because the President or
the Vice President cannot be at every meeting, it is proposed
that representatives be appointed to a sub-committee of the NSC
which can meet regularly in place of each member to act upon CIA
clandestine matters.
This sounded logical from an administrative point of view.
But was it legal? Congress and federal law already said how this
should be done. Congress knew that the NSC would be busy. They
also knew that those top men would be most responsible and
ultimately discreet. So Congress did not provide for a
subcommittee. But it was done.
The CIA had prevailed upon the NSC to publish a series of
National Security Council Intelligence Directives (NSCIDs). One
of these, NSCID 10/2, came close to giving the CIA what it
wanted. In that document the NSC had spelled out that the CIA
could get into clandestine work. However (and I used to have one
of the original drafts of this directive in my files in the
Office of the Secretary of Defense), President Eisenhower had
written in his own handwriting on the side margin of NSCID/10/2 a
stipulation to the effect that neither the military nor any other
branch of the government was to provide the CIA with men, money,
materials, or overseas base facilities in such quantity that the
agency would have the ability to carry out a series of
operations, a large operation, or a long-term operation.
Eisenhower knew that if he cut off its men, money, and supplies,
the CIA could not get deeply involved. The full meaning of this
interpretation cannot be overemphasized. Yet the CIA eventually
got around this device.
Even the written directives of Presidents are ignored.
For years Eisenhower's stipulation slowed Dulles down. But
through a procedure found in the complexities of the national war
planning process, of which the CIA's a part, he was able to find
another loophole and to build up supplies as though they were
part of his "Fourth Force" augmentation during wartime. The
military fell for this and gave him more war materiel then he
could ever use, even in peacetime.
Then the CIA penetrated the military with "cover" units.
At one time more than one thousand military units of varying
strengths belonged to the CIA. Even though they were not large,
they permitted men and materiel to flow anywhere -- and at no
cost to the CIA.
Then Allen Dulles got the Special Group established and it
became the platform for the development of a capability for
clandestine operations.
With meticulous care Dulles saw to it that the men
designated as representatives of the White House and of the State
and Defense Departments were men with strong CIA connections.
At one time General Edward G. Lansdale attended meetings for
the Secretary of Defense. Lansdale had served with the CIA for
most of his active "military" career.
By 1955, when I began my daily work within this secret
framework, the Special Group was regularly approving items
brought to it by the CIA. Very rarely, if ever, did the NSC
"direct" the CIA to get itself involved in some activity. Rather
the CIA, as Dulles has visualized, found itself creating and
originating exercises one after the other, with the Special Group
rubber-stamping them. In those days, when the CIA made a request
of the Department of Defense, we would screen top-secret Special
Group logs. If we found that the Defense Department
representative had "voted" to approve the "fun and games," we
would provide the men, materiel, and overseas resources through
an elaborate "cover" process that was global in its capability.
On the other hand, when we found that the operation had not
been presented to the Special Group, we would notify the
Secretary of Defense immediately and await his instructions.
Between 1955 and 1959 we had the power to stop CIA requests that
had not been approved by the Defense Department.
Sometimes the CIA would attempt to get around us and tie one
operation to another or otherwise attempt to beat the system. We
learned to put knowledgeable experts in the field --pilots,
doctors, and so on-- who would detect their plans and report them
immediately.
Once, when I was asked to move a squadron of Marine
helicopters from the Laos CIA operational zone to South Vietnam,
I found no precedent and no approval. I informed the Secretary
of Defense of this item and he did not approve the project. At
that time it would have been the first such move of major
"hardware" into South Vietnam.
The CIA battled this decision for weeks and finally
prevailed, as they usually did, by using the weight of the
Special Group and the White House.
Since those days the Special Group or Forty Committee has
become a power unto itself. The State Department has thousands
of career people who are responsible for the Foreign Policy of
the United States to the Forty Committee's five men. They
approve items that have much greater impact on world events than
the State Department.
They do this secretly, without proper review, without
comprehensive experience and often without anyone but a very few
"spooks" knowing about it.
Technically the CIA does not have this authority, and
legally this is not the way things should be done. The CIA was
never given this power by law and should not be permitted to
continue this practice. No new laws are needed; the present law
should be followed precisely and enforced. The CIA is in
existence to perform an intelligence function and no more.
It would not take much to conclude that the Forty Committee
possesses sufficient leverage over international affairs to
overthrow Allende. To give money to the opposition party in
Italy? To train King Hussein's elite bodyguard? To create and
build up the Shah of Iran? To grant soft drink bottling
concessions to Marshall Sarit of Thailand in order to make him
the most powerful and wealthy man of that CIA-pawn country? To
create Willy Brandt in West Germany and then to knock him down
when it wished? To overfly Chinese nuclear plants at will? To
arm and equip Indian Border Police? To infringe on the air
rights of Norway? To bolster the Katangese rebel government of
the Congo while the State Department was working with the legal
government? To overthrow Paz Estensoro? To spy in Antarctica
despite an international treaty prohibiting it? To play dirty
"dirty tricks" at several Olympic Games until the Games now have
become political battlegrounds? To spy with U-2's on the French
and British at the Suez in 1956?
To place so many CIA personnel in other branches and
agencies of the American government that the CIA is internally
powerful in almost every agency?
If the Forty Committee did not authorize these things, then
is the answer that the CIA did them on its own, illegally?
When Gary Powers's U-2 spy plane went down in the Soviet
Union in 1960, President Eisenhower did not know about it until
after he heard the news from Khrushchev. Rather than admit that
a tiny irresponsible cabal had sent the U-2 out, Eisenhower had
to say that he knew about it.
After the Bay of Pigs, when John Kennedy learned about the
CIA's role, he wrote three strong orders intended to control the
CIA. But he did not live to complete that task.
Lyndon Johnson admitted that the CIA ran a "damned Murder
Inc." but confessed that he was unable to do anything about it.
The combination of the Forty Committee and the CIA has
outlived any usefulness that it may once have had. It must be
abolished and the CIA must be so controlled by Congress and the
Executive that it will be removed from the business of
clandestine operations altogether.
After all, there are other ways to do these things.
We'll discuss them at a later date.
A segment of NSC 5412 follows below.
Known as the Special Group 5412/2, this subcommittee of the
National Security Council was the descendant of the Special Group
10/2 which, as described above, produced a document NSCID 10/2
that "came close to giving the CIA what it wanted" in terms of
being able to conduct clandestine operations. NSC 5412,
"National Security Council Directive on Covert Operations,"
effectively neutralized such oversight functions as were intended
to be carried out under the authority of the Operations
Coordinating Board (OCB) which was a part of NSC by law. OCB was
intended to be a group of senior individuals who would follow the
decisions made by the National Security Council and make sure
that the bureaucracy carried them out.
The following comes from "The U.S. Government and the
Vietnam War, Part I, 1945-1961," prepared for the Committee on
Foreign Relations, U.S. Senate, by the Congressional Research
Service, Library of Congress, printed by the U.S. Government
Printing Office, Washington, 1984.
Declassified in 1977, NSC 5412 is located at the National
Archives, RG 273. Also important to note here is the wording
that defined "covert operations."
NSC 5412, "National Security Council Directive on Covert
Operations," which continued to be the U.S. Government's basic
directive on covert activities UNTIL the NIXON administration's
NSC 40 in 1970, began with this statement of purpose:
"The National Security Council, taking cognizance of the
vicious covert activities of the USSR and Communist China and the
governments, parties and groups dominated by them ... to
discredit and defeat the aims and activities of the United States
and other powers of the free world, determined, as set forth in
NSC directives 10/2 and 10/5 [of the Truman administration],
that, in the interests of world peace and U.S. national security,
the overt foreign activities of the U.S. Government should be
supplemented by covert operations ...
"The NSC has determined that such covert operations shall to
the greatest extent practicable, in the light of U.S. and Soviet
capabilities and taking into account the risk of war, be designed
to:
"a. Create and exploit troublesome problems for
International Communism, impair relations between the USSR and
Communist China and between them and their satellites, complicate
control within the USSR, Communist China and their satellites,
and retard the growth of the milltary and economic potential
of the Soviet bloc.
"b. Discredit the prestige and ideology of International
Communism, and reduce the streneth of its parties and other
elements.
"c. Counter any threat of a party or individuals directly or
indirectly responsive to Communist control to achieve dominant
Power in a free worid country.
"d. Reduce International Communist control over any areas of
the world.
"e. Strengthen the orientation toward the United States of
the peoples and nations of the free world, accentuate, wherever
possible, the identity of interest between such peoples and
nations and the United States as well as favoring, where
appropriate, those groups genuinely advocating or believing in
the advancement of such mutual interests, and increase the
capacity and will of such peoples and nations to resist
International Communism.
"f. In accordance with established policies and to the
extent practicable in areas dominated or threatened by
International Communism, develop underground resistance and
facilitate covert and guerrilla operations and ensure
availability of those forces in the event of war, including
wherever practicable provisions of a base upon which the military
may expand these forces in time of war within active theaters of
operations as well as provision for stay-behind assets and
escape and evasion facilities."
NSC 5412 defined "covert operations" as "all activities
conducted pursuant to this directive which are so planned and
executed that any U.S. Government responsibility for them is not
evident to unauthorized persons and that if uncovered the U.S.
Government can plausibly disclaim any responsibility for them.
Specifically, such operations shall include any covert activities
related to: propaganda, political action; economic warfare;
preventive direct action, including sabotage, anti-sabotage,
demolition; escape and evasion and evacuation measures;
subversion against hostile states or groups including assistance
to underground resistance movements, guerrillas and refugee
liberation groups; support of indigenous and anti-communist
elements in threatened countries of the free world; deceptive
plans and operations; and all activities compatible with this
directive necessary to accomplish the foregoing. Such operations
shall NOT include: armed conflict by recognized military forces,
espionage and counterespionage, nor cover and deception for
military operations."
To approve and coordinate most covert operations, (some were
required to be approved by the President) NSC 5412 established
what became known as the 5412 Committee, also given the
nonspecific title, the Special Group, to reduce chances of
exposure. (In 1964, after the term "Special Group" became known,
the Group was called the 303 Committee. In 1970, it was renamed
the 40 Committee.) The 5412 Committee and its successors
consisted of the Deputy Under Secretary of State, the Deputy
Secretary of Defense, the President's Special Assistant for
National Security Affairs, and the Director of the CIA, with the
latter serving as the Group's "action officer." In 1957, the
Chairman of the JCS also became a member.
Section 403, paragraph "d" of the National Security Act of
1947, which defined the powers and duties of the CIA:
"Section 403. Central Intelligence Agency
"(d) Powers and Duties
"For the purpose of coordinating the intelligence activities
of the several Government departments and agencies in the
interest of national security, it shall be the duty of the
Agency, under the direction of the National Security Council:
"1. to advise the National Security Council in matters
concerning such intelligence activities of the Government
departments and agencies as relate to national security;
"2. to make recommendations to the National Security Council
for the coordination of such intelligence activities of the
departments and agencies of the Government as relate to the
national security;
"3. to correlate and evaluate intelligence relating to the
national security, and provide for the appropriate dissemination
of such intelligence within the Government using where
appropriate existing agencies and facilities:
"PROVIDED, that the Agency shall have no police, subpoena,
law-enforcement powers, or internal-security functions:
"PROVIDED further, that the departments and other agencies
of the Government shall continue to collect, evaluate, correlate,
and disseminate departmental intelligence:
"and PROVIDED further, that the Director of Central
Intelligence shall be responsible for protecting intelligence
sources and methods from unauthorized disclosure;
"4. to perform, for the benefit of the existing intelligence
agencies, such additional services of common concern as the
National Security Council determines can be more efficiently
accomplished centrally;
"5. to perform such other functions and duties related to
intelligence affecting the national security as the National
Security Council may from time to time direct."
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