Chapter 14
Transportation: Anywhere in the World -- Now
In moonlight so clear that the high Himalayas could be seen
one hundred miles away, an Air Force C-130 transport few over the
multinational border region of Laos, Burma, and China. In the
cargo compartment a small, highly skilled team of Tibetan Khamba
tribesmen huddled quietly beside the heavy airdrop pallets that
lined the center compartment. Under a dim light in the forward
part of the huge cargo area, four Agency men played
nickel-and-dime poker while they sipped hot coffee from the
plane's airborne kitchen hotplate. The crew peered into the
darkness at brilliant stars guiding them on into the vast
remoteness of Western China. From time to time the navigator was
busy taking star shots to verify the electronic navigation signals
he was getting, but which were growing dimmer and less reliable as
each hour passed.
The Operations officials of the Agency had directed that the
crew fly as low and as close to the horizon as they could with
safety, so that that their radar profile would be obscured by
ground clutter. This same low pattern played havoc with long-range
navigational signals from remote sites. But this gave the
experienced crew little concern. The C-130 was in fine shape, the
four turboprop engines purred in their sleek nacelles, and fuel
flow was well within the flight-plan parameters. Precise
navigation at this point was essential only to verify wind
conditions and to warn if major shifts in strength and direction
might have an impact upon total effective range. They knew that
this mission was going to demand all the range the C-130 had, and
a little more. The target for the airdrop of the Khambas and the
black cargo was in the vicinity of Koko Nor, deep in the outback
of unknown China.
A trainload of olive-drab Gl six-by-six U.S. Army trucks had
been delivered to a siding in North Carolina. A crew of men had
worked for days unloading the trucks and towing them to a small
remote dockside facility for loading onto an old, World War II
front-loading landing craft. Another old, but newly shipshape,
vessel lay at anchor, ready to shove off for the south as soon as
the last shipment of trucks had been hoisted aboard. Both ships,
with skeleton crews, slipped out of the port quietly and ran
southward to Puerto Rico, where they would await orders to join
the small armada bound for an unknown beach in the Bay of Pigs
region of western Cuba.
The temperature sometimes reached 125 degrees, perhaps even
135 degrees, in the scorching sunlight of northern Libya. The jet
fighters lining the runways shimmered in the ever-present mirage
that hung over the concrete runways. Men fueling these planes wore
heavy gloves, in spite of the intense heat, to protect themselves
from burns. Far across this huge base in the remote area reserved
for rockets and other armament, a few low outbuildings were the
only evidence of a below-ground ammunition and arms cache of a
most unusual nature. A steady stream of trucks had been weaving
back and forth all day from the huge C-124 transport planes to
this dump area to unload heavy cases of guns. These were not the
usual World War II leftovers. These were British Enfields, French
guns, and most important, they were a good mix of guns from Iron
Curtain countries, picked up from many sources, including
war-captured booty from the Israeli campaign in the Sinai Desert.
The common thread through all of these anecdotes is the fact
that in every case the Agency was operating in its own interest
with transportation provided by the military forces. The aircraft
belonged to the U.S. Air Force. The trucks and the special flatbed
rail carriers were provided by the U. S. Army. And the ships that
made the run to Cuba had been U.S. Navy equipment, refitted for
use in that operation. The Agency has ready access to all kinds of
transportation all over the world in the global transportation
system of the Department of Defense. This great network gives the
Agency the opportunity to carry out its work behind the screen of
regular military movements. This saves the CIA the problem of
covering the bulk of its movements, and it saves a tremendous
amount of money. Again, this is money that the Agency usually
protests it will gladly reimburse to the prime agent of the DOD,
provided it is billed for it. Most shipments made by the CIA
through the military networks are made to and from Agency cover
units using military designations. The cost therefore is not
identifiable unless a knowledgeable person intercepts the
shipment. This is not likely, because the Agency will protest and
the top echelons of the service will support it that the high
classification of the shipment precludes such identification. Thus
the bulk airlift of tons of guns, which would mean nothing to
military shipping clerks, travels without charge under the guise
of secrecy.
Much military shipment is made by contract airlift. During the
peak Vietnam operation years, the total of military-purchased
contract-airlift averaged three quarters of a billion dollars per
year. With the CIA responsible for a $1 billion a year
"pacification" program in Vietnam, it can be seen that the
Agency's share of that airlift could have been appreciable; yet
the chances are very good that no one ever knew just which
shipments were Agency shipments and what to charge for them or how
to collect reimbursement for them. When one reflects upon the
early days of the CIA and upon the serious precautions taken to
assure that the CIA would not grow beyond the size of a small,
truly special operations capability, it is most significant to
remember how all of this was done and how it has become such a
normal and accepted practice today that at times even the U.S.
Army has moved into certain operations under the cover of the CIA.
When the CIA leaves the realm of the DOD and must strike out
for itself into non-military areas and into areas where military
relationships must be abandoned, it is able to use its own funds
to provide its own first-class transportation to meet the
situation. Most Agency personnel going overseas do so under one
form of military cover or other, and as a result they travel on
military aircraft or military contract shipping. This includes
their household goods and other equipment as well. But there are
times when CIA personnel cannot travel as military personnel, and
then they travel as ordinary civilians and utilize all other means
available.
In foreign countries, the CIA procures fleets of indigenous
vehicles to be able to pass more easily among the population among
whom they will be working. It would be unwise for some man,
attempting to be inconspicuous in Istanbul, to be seen driving
around that crowded city in a new Buick or Chrysler. More than
likely, the Agency will see that he has a Volkswagen or Renault,
and perhaps one that is a few years old. In like manner, the
Agency purchases civilian aircraft and boats of various types and
sizes, to meet other special requirements. I have known of CIA
personnel traveling in dog-sled parties and in sleek civilian
business jets.
The Agency does not want for transportation anytime, anywhere,
and of any type, and they get so much of it free or for so little
relative cost that what they need over and above the bulk military
support, their own funds are more than adequate to provide. The
Agency has a very large and special fleet of its own equipment,
most of which is covered as commercial equipment. At the time of
the Bay of Pigs invasion, the CIA used landing ships of World War
II origin, which it had purchased from surplus sources and then
refitted for the occasion. In other water moves, the CIA has used
special Norwegian-built high speed boats, and it has used small,
light canoes. In such instances, the Agency mans these vessels
with its own personnel, and augments the agent cadre with
experienced men when necessary. Where the Agency excels in this
business is with its many clandestine airlines, which are
scattered throughout the United States and around the world. The
most famous of these is Air America.
Air America, the airline of the flying mercenaries, conjures
up stories true and imagined, real and unreal, of the Dragon Lady
and Terry and the Pirates and of deep, secret missions into
rebel-held territory in countries from faraway Asia to Latin
America. Air America, Incorporated, is a worldwide operation,
chartered in Delaware and listed solidly in Dun and Bradstreet.
Its main offices are within a few hundred yards of the White
House, on Washington's posh Connecticut Avenue, and it numbers
among its directors many famous names, including several former
Navy admirals who have at one time or other been Commanders in
Chief, Pacific (CINCPAC). Air America is a most important adjunct
of the CIA.
When the travel to Mecca is heaviest with the devout Moslems
involved in the hadj, a nondescript old transport aircraft will
shuttle pilgrims across the Arabian desert. When summer travel
peaks in Europe and thousands of students hire charter planes to
take them to an international peace festival in Munich, among
these available planes will be aircraft belonging to Air America
and flying under one of its countless cover, subordinate
companies. If the Agency wishes to make a clandestine cargo drop
in some out-of-the-way place like Burma, Pakistan, or Indonesia, a
perfectly normal appearing commercial transport aircraft will find
itself on business through and around that area for a while, until
any suspicion that might be aroused has died down; then on one
special flight it will open its rear cargo door and para-drop the
supplies, equipment, and perhaps agents over the selected target
zone.
The men of Air America are legendary, from the incomparable
"Earthquake" McCoon, who lost his life over Dien Bien Phu in an
unarmed C-119, to nameless and faceless Chinese and Anzacs, who
have flown for Air America on flights that would make fiction
accounts tame by comparison.
In the middle nineteen fifties, it became necessary to
resupply Agency outposts deep in Laos. The usual DC-3 or C-46 from
World War II surplus stockpiles required too much runway for some
of these rugged areas. Helicopters lacked the range and
load-carrying ability required. The CIA turned to light planes and
worked with the native tribesmen to clear landing strips deep in
the forested valleys of Laos. For a short time these strips were
useful, until their adversaries found them and showered them with
gunfire from the surrounding mountainsides.
Air America came in and selected landing sites in the most
precarious positions. It had become expert in the use of a small,
special plane used by the Air Force Special Air Warfare squadrons
and by the Army Special Forces troops. This plane was called the
L-28, or commercially, the Helio Courier. It was as rugged as a
Jeep and could land and take off in remarkably short distances.
This ability to land and take off in short distances is not by
itself sufficient to commend an aircraft to this special use.
Almost any light plane can, with a big engine, take off or land
from short distances. However, once that same plane is in the air,
if it does not have superior control surfaces and other slow
flying characteristics designed for really slow-speed control in
the air, it will be lethal in regular service. The Agency learned
this the hard way when it and the United States Information Agency
(USIA) missions attempted to use other aircraft that seemed able
to do the job and were a little cheaper. More than 50 percent of
those planes crashed in the first year of use. Meanwhile, the Air
America planes and experienced crews actually operated from
fantastically short and crude airstrips, which had been cleared by
the natives on top of the ridge lines of the high, forested
mountains of Laos. Even today, the flight handbook for pilots in
Southeast Asia speaks of two categories of landing grounds in Laos
-- regular and Helio. Air America and the rugged Helio have made
an unheralded and unequaled record all over Laos.
Air America is not a small unseen company. At two bases alone,
one in Thailand and one in Taiwan, it has more than four thousand
employees at each. To live its cover as a commercial airline, it
flies regular routes and is a major contract carrier airline
competing with other airlines of the world for flying business and
for aircraft maintenance work.
Years ago, when pilots and ground-crew men of the old
Chennault Flying Tiger groups decided to stay in China and to form
an airline there, CAT Airlines, the forerunner of Air America and
others of that time, operated all over the mainland. They bought a
fleet of World War II surplus C-46 cargo aircraft and set up a big
maintenance facility at a Chinese mainland airport. As the
fortunes of war drove them from one base to another, someone
decided to put the maintenance facility on board a big war surplus
ship. Finally, with the defeat of the forces under Chiang
Kai-shek, this shop with its facilities and stockpile of equipment
sailed to Taiwan and anchored beside a dock in Tainan. There this
most unusual aircraft maintenance facility performed maintenance
for a fast-growing and very busy fleet of planes for many years.
One could walk through that ship absolutely amazed at the
beehive-like activity on board. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of
Chinese worked in that ship on stages, rather than floors or
decks, joined by narrow catwalks. Many of those workers worked in
small basket-like spaces, barely large enough for a small Chinese.
Parts and materials were brought to them and poured into each work
space as through a funnel. The worker would finish his special
task and then drop the part through a short chute, where it would
end up for the next worker to do his part. The whole operation
worked on a sort of force-of-gravity basis, with the finished item
falling out at the bottom, ready for an alert runner to carry it
to the packaging room. Whole sets of aircraft engine spark plugs
would be specially treated and then placed into a big slab of
plank, drilled out specially to accommodate just enough plugs for
a certain type of engine, e.g., twenty-eight plugs for a
14-cylinder engine. This was done so mechanics would not have to
check plugs; they simply removed all of them and put in a whole
set of new plugs, while the old ones would be returned complete to
the shop.
Even instruments were rebuilt, and as they were, the faces and
decals were changed to have Chinese or English markings, as
required. There were propeller shops and wheel shops. Planes could
be completely rebuilt from this one facility. As a matter of fact,
the CIA had obtained master transparent film slide sets of the
aircraft manufacturers parts and supplies kits, and for such
planes as the DC-6. Air America could make every part just about
as well as Douglas Aircraft. The ClA justified this irregular and
perhaps illegal operation on the basis that it was working with
sanitized engines and aircraft and that it could not put such
items back in the supply line of the services. As a result,
instead of buying from Douglas, through the services, it simply
made the parts in its Tainan facility. It is entirely possible
that complete small aircraft were made in this manner and that Air
America or its subsidiaries ended up with more aircraft in
operation than it had had in the first place.
This technique is "justified" by the nature of air registry,
which precludes the availability and even the existence of "extra"
aircraft. Every aircraft built and flown must be registered. Once
it has been registered, that serial number stays with it for the
rest of its existence. Therefore, if the Agency wishes to remove
all traces of identity and ownership from an airplane in order to
make it plausibly deniable, it must also arrange to cover that
plane in the registry. This is done in many ways, one of which is
to assemble an extra plane from the parts available. To begin
with, the CIA may be able to salvage a destroyed aircraft and have
it declared discarded. Then from the frame or some other essential
part it will rebuild the plane from parts not having any serial
numbers at all. This method must be used with larger aircraft;
but the Tainan facility had the capability to build smaller
aircraft from scratch, just by assembling spare parts, many of
which it would have made itself right at the plant.
With this splendid maintenance organization, the Agency faces
the necessity to assure it sufficient business to be able to live
its cover as a commercial establishment. At this date and time it
is doubtful that the cover of Air America is of any real value.
Certainly, anyone who needs to know by now knows all about Air
America; but in any event, such a plant and all that equipment
cannot be permitted to stand idle. As a result, Air America and
its subsidiary maintenance components bid actively for commercial
airline contracts and especially for U.S. military contracts. It
is this military business that actually supports Air America. This
is true also in the airline passenger and cargo business.
Air America has a fine record, and on the basis of experience
and service it is at least the equal of other contract carrier
airlines that bid for U.S. military airlift. However, since the
Agency has a proprietary interest in Air America, the CIA feels
that the services should give the airline every opportunity to
bid, and everything else being equal, the opportunity to be
selected for contracts up to the minimum income level the Agency
holds is essential to keep the airline in business and give it the
added capacity to support ST activities when called upon.
There was a time when contract carrier bidding was very
competitive because the Pacific airlift had been cut back and
there was very little to go around. After a few cycles of bidding,
other airlines noted that Air America was getting business
steadily, even if not in large volume. One new and most
enterprising contract airline president flew into Washington and
presented his views to the proper authorities in the Office of the
Secretary of Defense and in the Air Force. At every turn he was
assured that the bidding had been perfectly legal and correct, and
that Air America was getting no more than its share and that Air
America had made valid low bids. This man had heard some stories
about Air America's pedigree, stories that were very easy to come
by in any bar in Hong Kong where Air America pilots were very
popular; so he went into town and hired a lawyer. As his good
fortune and, no doubt, his good sense would have it, the lawyer he
retained was a knowledgeable individual who among other things had
served as Secretary of the Air Force.
Accompanied by this gentleman, the airline president returned
to the Pentagon and held a brief meeting with certain aware
officials there. By the time they left the Pentagon, this airline
had the promise of a contract in the Pacific. The contract saved
that airline from lean years, and it would be nice to be able to
leave the story there with a happy ending.
Actually, once that airline president had learned the trick,
it was only inevitable that he would resort to that game again and
again. Middle-level executives and appointive officers in the
Pentagon rotate and move on after brief terms. With each
generation of new faces someone sooner or later would be
confronted by the same "pirate" airline president with the same
story. Each time, the heavy cloak of security had kept the new man
from knowing the antecedents of the case; so he would have to
seek help and advice from the staff. Inevitably he would be told,
"Do anything you can to placate the man. That subject is highly
classified, and we can't let legal action compromise the real
facts in the case." As a result, the president would get his
contract again and again. Because he knew that, he had all the
high cards in the deck. Today that contract carrier advertises as
one of the largest and most successful in the business, and its
very successful leader has done very well with his secret formula.
What was involved here was not such a lot of money; but it
is indicative of a great weakness in this sort of a system. What
works in one case works in countless others. It is a sort of
blackmail predicated on not breaking security, and no real
consideration is given to whether the security is worth the price
or not. This same type of "security blackmail" exists in many
forms. If a government does not get the Military Aid Program
material it thinks it should get, it will put pressure on the CIA
liaison people, telling them it will have to stop supporting a
reconnaissance unit or some radar installations, or some similar
threat. Then CIA puts pressure on the MAP staff and gets the
additional material for them, or may even get it out of its own
resources of stockpiled military material. Or, as in the case of
the Bay of Pigs operation, the governments that assisted Guatemala
and Nicaragua either kept what they "found on base" or bargained
for more. This upset other assistance plans because other
countries claimed the right to more equipment based upon a
balanced formula, security or not.
We see other applications of such blackmail, as in the case of
the ransom paid to Castro for the Cuban invaders. This figure in
money and heavy equipment as well as in medicine has been quoted
as being $53 million or more. It seems pertinent to note that so
much money and equipment was paid willingly for captured Cubans
and as far as we know, not one cent has been offered, except by
certain private citizens, for the release of our own prisoners of
war in Indochina.
After the adventure in Indonesia, considerable amounts of
equipment and preferential purchasing rights were paid to the
Government of Indonesia as a sort of compensation for that
misadventure.
In the case of the airline president above, he has made a
success of this technique, which has been exceeded only by the
success of Air America itself. This is now a very large and
honorable company directed and managed by some very able men. It
is the excellence and superiority of the men on the logistics side
of CIA who have made the Agency look good year after year in spite
of some of the problems created by the more adventuresome
operators. As Air America has become quite overt, respectable, and
above-board, it in turn has had to be the cover unit for much
really deep operational work. It has the capacity and the
know-how, and it certainly has the people, to perform aircraft
support for almost any operation that can be conceived.
In fact, it is organizations such as Air America that show how
the Agency could have done things from the beginning, if it had
not turned so quickly to the soft touch in the Department of
Defense. If the early opportunists had been content to perform
truly clandestine missions of a size and expectation that would
have had the chance to remain clandestine, then the CIA might have
managed to live within its charter and to have limited its
operational efforts to those actually in support of intelligence,
instead of becoming a vast international operational force. It was
the broad-gauge goals set by the Dulles-Jackson-Correa report and
the exploitation of the war-planning largesse of the military that
launched the Agency upon a runaway operational activity, which
resulted finally in the Indochina venture.