◆ SpookStack

¥...ted secret information w: ( “ne \y squasned by Bedell-Smith in per- von. He told me flatly that he was net prepared to trust a single #cench official with such informa- tions, Angleton had fewer fears about Germany. That country concerned him chiefly as a base of operations against the Soviet Union and the socia.ist ctates of Eastern Europe. The C{A hed lost no time in taking over the anti-Soviet section of the German Abwehr, under von Gehlen, and many of Harvey's lobsters went to provoke Angleton into defending, with chapter and verse, the past record and current activities of the von Gehlen organisation. We also had many skirmishes over the various Russian: emigré organisations. There was the Peo- ple’s Labour Alliance (NTS), which recently achieved notoriety in the of poor Gerald Brooke. There are the Ukrainian Fascists of Ste- yon Bandera, the darlings of the ritish. Both the CIA and SIS were up to their ears in emigré politics, hoping to use the more promising groups for purposes analogous to those for which we had used Jor- dania. Although the British put up a stubborn rearguard action in favour of the groups with which they had been long associated, the story was one of general American encroachment in the emigré field. The dollar was just too strong. For instance, although the British had an important stake in the NTS, SIS ‘was compelled by financial reasons to transfer responsibility for its operations to the CIA. The transfer was effected by formal agreement o>tween the two organisations, though the case of Brooke, an Eng- lishman, suggests that SIS is not aove playing around with the Alli- unce under the counter. Such an ac- tion would be quite in keeping with sne ethics of secret service. We had much else to discuss about Germany, since both SIS and the CIA could afford to spread themselves on occupied territory. Secret activity of all kinds, includ- ing operations directed against the German authorities themselves, “a financed by the Germans, as part of the payment for the ex- penses of occupation. Apart from Angleton, my chief OSO contact was a man I shall refer to here as William J. Howard of the counter-espionage section. He was @ former FBI man whom Hoo- ver had sacked for drunkenness on ( duty. The first time he dined at my , house, he showed that his habits ~ had remained unchanged. He fell asleep over the coffee and sat snor- ing gently until midnight when his wife took him away, saying: “Coie now, Daddy, it’s time you were in bed.” I may be accused here of in- troducing a cheap note. Admitted. But, as will be seen later, Howard was to play a very cheap trick on me, and J do not like letting provo- cation go unpunished. Having ad- mitted the charge‘ of strong anti- Howard prejudice, it is only fair that Lphould add that he cooperated well with SIS in the construction of the famous Berlin tunnel. bad HE FBI WAS in sorry shape when I reached Washington. It had caught a tartar in the small person of Judith Coplon, a brilliant young woman employed in the Department of Justice, against whom they were trying to bring home espionage charges. When the evidence against her, obtained largely by illegal tele- phone-tapping, had hardened suffi- ciently to justify her arrest, Hoover sanctioned the necessary action, and Coplon was pulled in. She was caught in the act of passing docu- ments to a contact, and the case against her seemed open and shut. But in their haste the FBI had neg- lected to take out a warrant for her arrest, which was therefore in itself illegal. The FBI could only effect arrests without warrant if there ‘was a reasonable presumption that the suspect was contemplating im- minent flight. As Coplon was picked up in a New York street, walking away from a station on the Elevated from which she had just emerged, the purpose of imminent flight could not have been imputed to her by any conceivable stretch of imagina- tion. ‘The illegality of the arrest was duly lambasted in court, but worse was to follow. Coplon, though caught red-handed, was resolved to fight to the end. She dismissed her first counsel on the grounds that he was too conciliatory to the prosecu- tion; he was probably aiming, nct at acquittal, which seer.ed a hope- less prospect, but at a mitigation of sentence, Copion would have none of it. With a second counsel to assist her, she went over to tie counter- attack and began harrying the FBi witnesses. She tied them in such knots that they admitted to tapping not only her telephone, but tele- phones in the headquarters of the United Nations. The court proceed- ings began to damage the public image of the FBI so severely that Hoover incontinently dropped the charges. It was characteristic of him that he reacted to the fiasco by finding a scapegoat. Harvey Flem- ming, the principal FBI witness at the trial, was fired. But Coplon went free. It was the triumph of a brave woman. Whenever her name was mentioned thereafter in the Depart- ment of Justice, an abusive adjec- tive was attached. My first house in Washington was off Connecticut Avenue. The house was a small one, and J was soon arguing the need for moving to larger quarters at a safer dis- tance, eventually settling on a place about half a mile up Nebraska Ave- nue. Johnny Boyt was my principal contact with the FBI, and I saw him several times a week, either in his office or at home. He was one of Hoover's original gunmen in De- troit—“the guy who always went in first” when there was shooting to be done—and he looked the part. He was short and immensely stocky, and must have been hard as nails before he developed a paunch, jowls and the complexion that suggests a stroke in the offing. He had no intellectual interests whatsoever. His favourite amusement was to play filthy records to won.-n visit- ing his house for the first iime. He had other childish stre: jaclad- ing the tough, direct <:..ulessness of a child, By any objective stand- ard, he was a dreadful man, but i