I thought I had more files (more subjects) than I'm finding now, but I guess we'll do this one next.
You should remember that when I was doing this research, on an extended visit to the USA from Russia in the mid-1990s, I was trying to make sense of my life and things that had happened that didn't match up with how we think (or at least how I always thought) things are supposed to be. Now, if, say, I had applied to work for the CIA than I probably would have expected these kinds of things, and more, I'm sure. But I hadn't, and so I didn't expect them. So I chose these sources because something in them helped me sort things out.
I was hoping to start with a file more closely connected to my dad's work, but this one may have some things along that line. I'm not sure which article to start with so I'm just starting with sort of a broad-based one.
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The following citations come from this book:
The Need to Konw: The Report of the Twentieth Century Fund Task Force on Covert Action and American Democracy. (1992). New York: The Twentieth Century Fund Press.
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This citation is just to start us off on a common understanding of "covert action."
"A very recent statute, the Intelligence Authorization Act of August 14, 1991 (Public Law 102-88) defines covert action as 'an activity or activities of the United States Government to influence political, economic, or military conditions abroad, where it is intended that the [U.S.] role ... will not be apparent or acknowledged publicly.'" (p.3)
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Some of the example on page 4 of U.S. covert action post World War II to 1992 (when the book was written) include:
"... providing books and stipends to intellectuals in iron curtain countries..."
"... help toward sustaining dissidents in Central and Eastern Europe who were prepared to take the reins of government at short notice."
My contention is that it is possible that the U.S. government saw the work of Christian missions to Eastern Europe as supporting their goals in that part of the world and may have been interested in that work.
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Later on this same page the goal of the book is stated as reassessing "the role of covert action and its impact on American democracy."
Another contention I put forth is that if Christian missions did cooperate in any way with the U.S. government that it's time to reassess the impact of this cooperation on American church life too.
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"Accountability lies at the heart of the democratic process. Because covert action is secret, deceptive, and intended as deniable, it carries an inherent risk: an administration could - without the knowledge of citizens or even Congress - bypass procedures of accountability in the conduct of foreign policies and military activities. Indeed, in the past, some covert actions were deliberately designed so that the president could plausibly deny he was aware of them - leaving, always, the possibility that maybe he wasn't." (p. 10)
It doesn't take a lot of imagination (at least for me it doesn't) to substitute Christian missions for U.S. Certainly, what I've already discussed on this blog about the division of knowledge in my Vienna experience, always provided a "gee, I didn't know" scapegoat possibility. After my total mission experiences, nothing would surprise me.
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"Our concern with accountability leads us also to propose extending the responsibility of the director of Central Intelligence, along with the requirements for presidential findings and congressional notice, to include certain activities of the military services not possibly excluded as 'traditional.' These run to counterintelligence activities (especially double-agent or disinformation operations) and cover and deception activities that would have the effect of on other governments of covert action as now defined." (p. 12)
This passage, the significance of it for me, pertains to my dad. He had direct contact with generals in the military. Is it possible that they may have had an interest in protecting my father, which may have included meddling in my interest in Eastern Europe and the USSR in particular?
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"Whatever government's popular mandate, each citizen retains certain substantive as well as procedural rights that government may not violate.
Covert action inevitably weakens these limitations. ...
* Insofar as covert action conceals executive action from public view, it also weakens the protections that citizens have against governmental invasion of rights other than voting. Citizens who do not realize that governmental officials, not other private persons, are violating their rights have very limited remedies. Citizens may, for example, obtain injunctive relief or monetary damages against the CIA's or the FBI's conducting, even through 'unknown agents.' 'black-bag operations' against them." (p. 16-17)
Does this mean that there are/were loopholes that might have allowed US intelligence to meddle in my life (because of my father)?
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"I confess I am influenced by the fear that forbidding covert action altogether would not, in fact, end its use by the United States." (p. 18)
I agree.
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In a chapter titled "Dissenting View of Hodding Carter III":
"What is the nation's experience with covert action? As the majority report says, the American public doesn't really know. Some successes have been publicized, though upon reflection, too many of those 'successes,' like the overthrow of other governments and undeclared wars upon civilian targets in the name of ideological jihad, were successes better left to totalitarians and thugs." (p. 21)
There's a lot here for sure. I'll take it from the top, about the American public now knowing much about covert action. That's the thing, if I was a victim of covert action, I feel that a lot was done to discredit me to that it would be very hard to speak out, and I wasn't even sure who did what, even if I thought that someone had done a certain thing (that I experienced). Are there others out there like me, maybe not exactly like me, but with stories that they suspect were caused by government stooges? And if there are others, are they also in situations making it hard to speak out... until, like me, maybe years and years after the fact? Of course, this paragraph means other covert actions not specifically against American citizens, too, I understand that. We don't know enough about those either to judge whether it's worth doing - the covert action I mean.
And I agree about the reference to "totalitarians and thugs". There are a lot of wicked governments and leaders of governments out there, and that doesn't really bother us unless it hurts our national interests, or what Washington perceives to be our national interests. But we still pretend that we're great humanitarians (despite the inconsistency/self-interest in our display generosity).
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Talking about the post-World War II Cold War:
"Any tactic or strategy that promised to hasten our victory or impede Moscow's was increasingly portrayed as not only justifiable, but indispensible." (p. 22)
ANY tactic? Wow, that's scary. My dad was in a cold war position, so that means they might have used "any tactic" to (basically) protect star wars (S.D.I.). That puts me in a pretty bad position.
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The rest of the book is the:
Background Paper, by Allan E. Goodman and Bruce D. Berkowitz
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"The president (via executive orders) and the National Security Council (via NSC directives) determine the types of special activities that can be conducted. The only publicly available official document that spells out what such special activities are is a 1948 NSC directive 10/2, which lists the following:
'...propaganda, economic warfare, preventive direct action including sabotage, anti-sabotage, demolition and evacuation measures, subversion against hostile states, including assistance to underground resistance movements, guerilla and refugee liberation groups and support of indigenous anti-communist elements." (p. 31-32)
That's the ONLY available document as of 1992?! Pretty scary, if you ask me. It makes me think that the sky's the limit... I mean if we don't really know what the limits are because the limits are too secret to divulge... except for one 44 year old document! (44 years if counting back from 1992, not from today, because I am just going by what this book says, so I can't speak for anything later than that.)
The last thing that's allowed, pretty well might include the work of Christian missions to (then) Communist countries. Certainly, we know that in several of the East Bloc countries churches were instrumental for organizing the people against the government. The Catholic Church and Solidarity in Poland is one example, but even the youth meeting I went to in 1983 was semi-political, hence the joke about the two Jews talking about politics that came from that meeting. So there's definitely a motive for the U.S. government being willing to help Christian missions. Whether or not the feeling is mutual is not addressed here, but it's just something to think about, and especially considering some of the earlier things I discussed here.
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"Covert action was used far more extensively in the Reagan administration; the number of operations rose annually "to some 40-odd ... many of which are described by officials as major undertakings." (p. 40)
Now I don't want to give you the idea that I am certain that my life involved any of this kind of thing or maybe something similar, but even finding hints that it was possible helps me keep a window of hope open that maybe there is some logical explanation for the things I experienced. It just so happens that the bulk of my U.S./Western problems were during the Reagan administration, which was 1981-1989.
There could also have been more covert operations involving Christian missions to Communist lands too, and it was during this time that SGA might have been receiving CIA moneys for their short-wave radio work.
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"While the Iran-contra affair focused attention on the power of the White House staff, most scholars, as well as most government officials, tend to agree that CIA officers, not politically appointed officials or zealots in the White House, propose the bulk of covert action operations." (p. 53)
I suspect that the military, maybe not the CIA, per se, has a system in place to monitor people and organizations in certain defense industry lines, and somewhere along the line some intelligence person or the other caught wind of my burgeoning work in the East Bloc and may have also had reason to believe I might be of interest to the Soviets. If that were the case, what would they do? What do you think?
And as pertains to whether there were government links to these missions (military chaplains, money exchanged, etc.), how did that connection come to be? Any church historians interested? That could be a very interesting study, to say the least. But be forewarned, that you may be treated like a spy or something it you try to do such a study. Heck, I couldn't even send out a questionnaire to help guide me in deciding who to work with! So who knows what response you'd get if you tried to tackle this one. But if you need any assistance, feel free to contact me. I may be the only friendly contact you'll have in such a study.
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"In most cases the CIA will be responsible for implementation, but not always; covert actions have been carried out by the military and by other agencies within the national security community." (p. 58)
FYI. I don't have any comment on this, just that it leaves the door open for different agencies' involvement.
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Appendix A "Overview of U.S. Covert Action Since World War II", by Laura Larsen-Tanuis
"...[S]ix major types of covert activities have been conducted by the U.S. government over the past forty years: paramilitary operations, propaganda and disinformation campaigns, political action programs, economic warfare operations, special operations in support of foreign governments, and the maintenance of a substantial secret infrastructure." (p. 81)
The rest of the chapter describes this kinds of operations, giving specific examples of each. This is another "FYI". The main thing I come away with from this text is that probably SGA's short-wave radio work could have fallen under "propaganda and disinformation campaigns" in their view, and an example given of this kind of covert action is Radio Free Europe and Radio Free Liberty.
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Appendix D: Excerpt from Public Law 102-88
... Title I - INTELLIGENCE ACTIVITIES
SEC. 101. AUTHORIZATION OF APPROPRIATIONS
Funds are hereby authorized to be appropriated for fiscal year 1991 for the conduct of the intelligence activities of the following elements of the United States Government:
(1) The Central Intelligence Agency.
(2) The Department of Defense.
(3) The Defense Intelligence Agency.
(4) The National Security Agency.
(5) The Department of the Army, the Department of the Navy, and the Department of the Air Force.
(6) The Department of State.
(7) The Department of the Treasury.
(8) The Department of Energy.
(9) The Federal Bureau of Investigation.
(10) The Drug Enforcement Administration." (p. 97-98)
All of those agencies could receive funds for covert action. That's a pretty broad brush, if you ask me.
[After a break]
I've been trying to find some research I know I collected, but I don't know where it is (it's hard moving around so much trying to keep track of where everything is). But I found another file that I clean forgot about.
At the time that I was writing a bunch of Freedom of Information Act requests to figure out if I could get any answers there, I wanted to know what kind of a security clearance my dad had. A US congressman from the state where I was living at the time helped me and sent me a form he said I needed my dad to sign and have notarized before I could get that information. So my dad did that and I eventually got the response. Man, so much has happened in my life that sometimes it's hard to keep track of what's up and what's down.
Anyway, the Defense Security Service gave me the information regarding Dad's security clearance, but the other information I'd requested they only keep 5 or 6 years (2 different times for 2 different files). I don't understand everything, because it's using a lot of abbreviations.
The date, probably the last time the clearance was given or reviewed, was 1990/01/12. Then there are a bunch of agency codes as follows: DCII, FBI-HQ, FBI-T, CBC, CIA, DIS
Also, after his birth date is "SB=WA CB" I'm not sure what that means, but WA could be Washington state, where he lived.
Anyway, returning to the text, dad evidently, if I'm reading it correctly had clearances for several of those agencies.
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Before I go on, I just want to side track a little here, if it's okay. Finding this file that Dad helped me get is really touching. But then it hurts to think that when my parents flew out to me in Pennsylvania when I was having all that trouble with the interferon and they got there as I was in e.r. my second time and something happened then that dad said he didn't believe me any more and he had a low security clearance.
My whole relationship with him as an adult has been like that, I mean I really think my life, since I was 25 anyway was largely sideswiped because of his work (he was affected some by me, but not anything like I was). And then it's affected the rest of the family too, and I think they understand even less, because at least dad was somewhat familiar with some of the things I was dealing with because of his work. So from my end our relationship has been pretty ambivalent in many ways, although my brother in Seattle will point out how he (Dad) was so upset at my problems leaving Russia for good and how he helped me (I did a lot on my end in Russia too, and I'm not sure which end was more effective, but we'll get to that in 1997).
I'm sorry I had to divert like this, but right now I feel pretty emotional about this regarding my dad. No matter what, it was very nice of him to be willing to have that form signed and notarized so I could have this information.
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Actually, that's all I want to cite from that book. So it's a good time now to say good night.
~ Meg
