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TOP 3~CRE*1 I don't mean to be unduly immodest, but really, I didn't have any qualifications for this [WH/4] except that I was there and unemployed -- had no Spanish language whatsoever, and my entire exposure had been punching cows in Arizona in 1940. That doesn't really bring you up much on Latin America and latinos, and any of that ••• I had never been on an amphibious operation. and if that was characteristic of my quali- fications, it really characterized the whole damned operation ••. about which, it seemed to me, there was a good deal of well-meaning hypocrisy. Allen Dulles, always meaning what he said, would say repeatedly, "no·...., I want the very best people assigned to this project ..• there is nothing more important that we are doing than this; and I want directed assignments •.. I want people pulled out of tours overseas if necessary, this thing must be manned."' Everybody would solemnly nod and, then. much like the case of Vietnam ••• humans being humans ••• we would tend to get the people that the area Division Chiefs found "excess" -- which normally meant "'found insufficient." With many notable exceptions. we did not get the very best people avai~­ able. 118/ Although Drain levelled his broadside at a~l of the Divisions in the DDP,he was most critical of the Western Hemisphere Division: More of this staffing would have come from WH if there had been more competent people within WH. WH suffered, in my opinion, from a surfeit of ex-FBI officers who had been picked up at the time that the Agency took over from the Bureau in Latin America ... but there were damned few of them that had any particular ex- perience ... One of the main things that plagued me was that I c0uld never - 129 - ~i tD < Wi 0 tB'r