UNDERSTANDING SPECIAL OPERATIONS (Ratcliffe 1999), CHAPTER 1I came on duty before the beginning of WWII, an ROTC cavalry unitActive duty with the 4th Armored Division July 10th 1941I reported to Creighton W. Abrams from my own home townI began flight training in Maxwell Field in Alabama about May of 1942In February of 1943 I was in Africa with the Air Transport CommandWe flew General Smith into Saudi Arabia to meet representatives of Standard OilThat’s the first clandestine exercise I was ever involved inWe established an operating base during the Cairo ConferenceIn Teheran, Churchill had no ID, the Russians weren’t going to let him throughSuccess at Teheran enabled Chiang Kai-shek to put more pressure on the JapaneseAmerican generals supported Ho Chi Minh against the JapaneseA few miles below the Turkish Syrian border, 750 American former prisoners of warI realized that some of my passengers were Nazi intelligence officersThis group did contain men who had been selected by Frank Wisner of the OSSI never saw devastation equal to what I saw in the Soviet UnionJanuary of ’45 I began flying the Pacific, four-engine transport workThe atom bomb had been used, this was mid-August, the Japanese had quitWe flew up to Tokyo on September 1st, 1945At Atsugi air base, here were our enemies, they came over and helped usEquipment for 500,000 men going to Hanoi in IndochinaHiroshima, I flew very low over the area and had a good look at itThe decision had been made to establish an Air Force ROTCI taught a very interesting course called “The Evolution of Warfare”I visited Werner Von Braun to write about rockets and missilesThe Korean War broke out in June of 1950I was one of five officers selected to initiate a new Air Defense CommandA difficult period, because of the enormous devastation power of the atom bombSpring of ’52, I was the Military Manager of Tokyo International AirportOut of Tokyo we ran a regularly scheduled Embassy RunCivil Air Transport, were delivering supplies to the French, fighting Ho Chi MinhI met Colonel Lansdale and his organization in VietnamI was selected to attend the Armed Forces Staff College, in Norfolk, VirginiaOne of the courses was a hypothetical NATO confrontation through EuropeIt just shocked the whole group, the impact of what nuclear weapons could doThe hydrogen bomb would wipe out any city, you cannot fight war with thatI went to the Pentagon from that schoo, to the Air Force Plans Office, in July of 1955General Thomas White told me NSC had published Directive Directive 5412, in 1954The Department of Defense would provide support for clandestine operations“Military Support of the Clandestine Operations of the United States Government”I was the “Chief of Team B,” in charge of clandestine operations, for the Air ForceThe Economy Act of 1932 became the heart of the covert programWe created literally hundreds of false military organizationsThe 1234 Logistics Squadron really belongs to CIAThis clandestine system we established, we called “Tab-6”Mr. Dulles sent me around the world to many of his stationsIn Athens there was a camp for people we call, “mechanics” (hit men, gunmen)Thousands of ex-Nazis were being brought to the US for their various skillsWe could paratroop people in following a massive nuclear attack“Special Forces” were created for that post-strike purposeHitler’s chief of intelligence, Reinhardt Gehlen, became a U.S. Army generalEuropean command began looking on CIA as a “Fourth Force” in nuclear warfareFrom 1945 until 1965, CIA was the operating command for military forces in VietnamCIA had quite an air force, operated and maintained under “Air America”New Year’s Eve of 1958-59, I waited for CIA orders to go into CubaSenator Kennedy understood events going on in Vietnam and Laos and in CubaPresident Kennedy was briefed, 3,000 instead of 300 and an invasion was plannedThe first objective for the program: they must destroy the aircraftThree B-26 bombers destroyed all but three of Castro’s combat-capable aircraftMcGeorge Bundy reversed the President’s decision and said, “no air strike tomorrow.”We didn’t need air cover, those Cuban jets were supposed to be rubble by sunriseWe had to cover Vietnam with helicopter maintenance peopleA great number of those were cover military; they were involved with the CIABy the summer of ’63 Kennedy had made up his mind to get out of VietnamNSAM 263, otherwise known as the Taylor/McNamara Trip Report of October ’63By the end of 1965 all U.S. personnel will be out of VietnamPresident Diem was killed in VietnamEd Lansdale came to me one day, “Fletch, how would you like to go to the South Pole?”I was out of Washington from, I think, the 10th of November until November 28thThat time, unequaled in history, Vietnam War, the death of Kennedy, other strange eventsThe Secretary of Defense established an office called the Office of Special OperationsProviding for Department of Defense support in connection with special operations activitiesWe had to work with Treasury, with FAA, with Customs, we had to have cleared peopleAs intricate as anything we did in the days was handling moneyNSA is eyes and ears, a purely technical or mechanical jobCommunications channels exist all over the world, floating around, all vibrating awayCIA activities are much different from the NSA activitiesLansdale was a good operator, but not the man to be the bossEd Lansdale in Dealey Plaza Video
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