Thomas,
Evan. The Very Best Men -- Four Who Dared: The Early Years of the
CIA. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995. ISBN 0-684-81025-5
Frank Wisner, Richard Bissell, Des Fitzgerald and Tracy Barnes were the
fathers of the CIA's covert action programs. They were four sons of the
New England Establishment, graduates of Groton and the Ivy League, swashbucklers
and heroes to some, evil incarnate to others. How did a group of men brought
up in such privilege become the dirtiest of tricksters?
Evan Thomas, Assistant Managing Editor and Washington Bureau Chief of Newsweek,
has helped to answer these questions. Using a combination of personal recollections
from friends and family members, CIA retirees now willing to speak on the
record, CIA histories and some of the best of recent writing on the CIA,
he has put together a fascinating tale in which the four lives are woven
together through layers of family, society, politics, and the CIA.
Starting at the very beginning, Thomas looks at the earliest days of the
four. Using a rich collection of personal and family recollections, the
traits that marked them for their later careers were already visible (at
least in retrospect) in their teens. All were brought up in well-to-do families
(although each appears to have been unhappy in its own way) and were set
up for good careers with education in exclusive private and Ivy League schools.
The privileged backgrounds gave them a level of self-confidence that some
have characterized as arrogance but that should really be seen as hubris.
When the US entered World War II, three of the four abandoned comfortable
livings in Wall Street to see action in Europe and Asia, with each of them
having a "good war." The fourth (Bissell) played an important
role in the organization of Atlantic convoys and in the prosecution of the
Marshall plan.
The post-war years saw the four trying to return to Wall Street . Wisner
was the first to decide that his future lay in more direct action and went
on to form the Office of Policy Coordination, originally in the State Department
and later to be subsumed by the CIA with the other three following with
not unreasonable haste. Wisner's return was at a very propitious time for
him: the Cold War was at its coldest and the need to "do something"
was very strongly felt in Washington. Although OPC and CIA set to with a
will, they were a group of naifs completely outclassed by Soviet intelligence
services with a tradition going back to Ivan the Terrible's Oprichnina.
The comments of John Bruce Lockhart (SIS liaison to the CIA 1952-54) on
US covert action in the later part of World War II and the early days of
the Cold War are alone almost worth the price of the book. Unfortunately,
the lessons that should have been learned from the failure of these operations
were not necessarily learned.
As the CIA found its footing and covert actions were unleashed in Italy,
Albania, Iran, Guatemala, Indonesia, and Cuba, these men were in the thick
of it. For Wisner, the strain eventually proved too much and after failed
treatment for manic depression, he finally committed suicide. Thomas' description
of Wisner's descent into his manic-depressive final days and suicide is
humane and moving.
Although Fitzgerald and Barnes had been lieutenants of Wisner throughout,
they were passed over as his replacement in favor of the technocratic Bissell.
Although an extraordinarily capable and tough-minded manager, he had, by
his own admission, not a clue about covert operations. It is at this point
that CIA covert action began to fall apart. Starting with the Bay of Pigs
disaster, the continuing campaigns against Castro, the plans to assassinate
Lumumba, Trujillo, and Sukarno, the Directorate of Operations appears to
have operated entirely without the discrimination, discipline, or planning
that had helped the earlier operations to succeed. Bissell left the CIA
shortly afterwards. Fitzgerald and Barnes were the only two left of the
original four and they were in the Far East for the Vietnam War. After these
operations, Laos and Vietnam, and the Church Committee, they eventually
left the CIA. Fitzgerald was forced to fire Barnes by then-DCI Richard Helms
as the final action in an ideological struggle between Helms and his prudent
professionals and the bold Northeasterners epitomised by these four characters.
The book rounds off their stories with retirement and final days as they
managed to recover from the physical and spiritual erosion they experienced
as Cold Warriors.
The best parts of the story are those told by friends and family. This is
where we learn about what made these men and how they thundered with such
unreflective self-confidence into the shadowlands of the Cold War. They
appear to have bounded through everything in much the same manner, Bissell's
love of sailing by dead-reckoning in the worst of New England sailing conditions
is perhaps a paradigm of the character. When the book moves closer to established
history, it is not quite as valuable. It depends on published accounts with
official CIA histories used to flesh out the stories. However, these parts
are well executed and useful. For example, Thomas' version of the overthrow
of Arbenz (Operation PBSUCCESS) shows the thing to have been less well-organized
and closer run than the popular mythology would have us believe.
Other aspects of the book are less satisfying. The role of the CIA in policy
making is handled superficially at best. The discussion of the role of the
President in authorizing covert actions is also fumbled. For example, he
describes Bobby Kennedy as an intense supervisor of the campaign against
Castro who pushed very hard for drastic action. The relationship of the
Kennedy brothers makes plausible deniability unworkable, as does Truman's
unconditional pardon of Bedell-Smith for anything he might do in the future.
Despite his observations, Thomas falls back on the Thomas á Becket
scenario of vague commands misunderstood by underlings. Thomas Powers once
pointed out that a major function of the CIA was to protect the President
and take the blame. Thomas would have done well to consider this in his
discussion.
This book is well worth reading for its insights into these four personalities
and the world that made them. It should not be read in isolation, rather
it should be taken together with Peter Grose's Gentleman Spy or Christopher
Andrew's For the President's Eyes Only or with the books that Thomas
generously compliments in his chapter notes. In this context, the book becomes
a useful addition to one's understanding of the CIA.
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