Hadden - Conversations with a masked man my father, the CIA, and me

Copyright 2016 by John Hadden

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

Cover design by Laura Klynstra

Cover image: Shutterstock

Print ISBN: 978-1628725919

Ebook ISBN: 978-1628726329

Printed in the United States of America

To Beatrice
From her grandfather

Contents

Timeline

1923JLH Born 1923, New York City

1927Collapse of German economy

1929JLH Attends Buckley School, NYC

Great Depression Begins

1935JLH Attends Groton School

1939Germany Invades Poland

1941JLH Attends Harvard University; Japan Attacks Pearl Harbor

1942JLH Attends US Military Academy at West Point

1945US Drops Atom Bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki; End of WWII; JLH is US Army Engineer in Germany

1948Arab-Israeli War Begins

1949JLH Joins CIA, Base Berlin

1952JLH Marries Kathryn Falck

1953Rosenbergs Executed; CIA-Backed Coup in Iran; JLH, Jr. Born

1954JLH Establishes CIA Base Hamburg; CIA-Backed Coup in Guatemala

1956JLH at CIA, Washington DC; US Tests First H-Bomb over Bikini Atoll

1958JLH at CIA Salzburg, Austria, 1958-1961

1961JLH at CIA, Washington DC; Berlin Wall Erected; Bay of Pigs Invasion, Cuba

1963JLH is CIA Station Chief, Tel Aviv, Israel; JFK Assassination

1964Gulf of Tonkin Resolution: Vietnam War Begins

1967Arab-Israeli Six-Day War; JLH at CIA Middle East Desk under Angleton, Washington, DC

1968MLK Assassination

1970Students Killed at Kent State University by National Guard Officers

1972Nixon Exposed for Watergate Break-In

1973JLH Retires from CIA, Teaches History, Woodberry Forest School, VA; CIA-Backed 9/11 Coup in Chile

1975JLH Retires: Lecturer, woodworker, Brunswick, ME

1991Persian Gulf War

2001Trade Center Attack; Global War on Terror Begins

2013JLH Dies in Brunswick, ME

2014Birth of ISIL

Preface

M y father spent the last few years of his CIA career in Washington, DC, during the Nixon administration. He didnt like being in Washington; hed managed to be posted overseas for most of his early career. But now hed achieved too high a rank to be sent out again. Uncomfortably hemmed in, he quit just before Watergate broke, collected his thirty-year retirement package, and moved to Maine.

He liked to talk. But not about himself and rarely, if ever, about his work. He was a private man. Growing up, he and I were often at odds. I wanted very much to make sense of his worldviewor debunk it. I loved him very much and I believe the feeling was mutual, but I wanted this love to mean something, to provide answers, to show the way. These three particular motivations, however, were so absent from his own way of thinking that there was no way he could satisfy me.

Not long after 9/11, I asked my father if I could interview him on tape and write a book about his life in and out of the CIA. To my surpriseor to surprise mehe agreed, as long as he could edit the results. Of course: there was no other way he could talk freely. We recorded long conversations. He demolished my interrogations. Each new turn he took wiped out whatever dossier I was foolishly trying to assemble. Sometimes reluctant, sometimes bitter, or cynical, or uproarious, he told mesmerizing stories, laced with surreal black comedy, some very hard facts, and a labyrinth of clues and deceptions. Even at his most rigorously accurate, my father was a contradictory character, the kind we love in the theater.

Ive kept our interviews in dialogue form to let the reader be lulled and misled, as I was, and to arouse skepticism. I want readers to hear it, as a play, in which the puzzle is to be solved, as often as not, by what is not said, to hear the tone of voice, to trust the sound more than the words.

In our conversations, which were more fragmented and wayward than I have presented them here, he talked about his travelsin different countries, different bureaucratic circles, politics, factionsbut he wanted me to know that he didnt go anywhere really, that the whole exercise was useless and absurd. Any sense of his journey as a spiritual destiny, fighting the good fight, or adding-up of any kind was out of the question.

While reworking this material after a long hiatus, Ive found a deeper sense of the cruel stupidities he was faced with for most of his time in the CIAand the deadening of his sense of belonging to a cause, or even a country, or even a species. And I feel a deeper sympathy for him than I did when he was alive. (There are simpler reasons for my admiration, too: Im proud that he was there to stop the bombing of Cairo, for instance.)

My father refused to look at the evidence of his life except in the most literal way, which to me was meaningless. My own experience of our travels, as a family, was that they were remarkable, laden with meaning and destiny. But his stubborn dismissal of anything remotely metaphorical was suspect: he played himself as a character, as my foil. He encouraged the differences between us and reveled in the fact that The Way, which I kept hoping he would help me find, was entirely up to me. He was the Mad Hatter at the tea party.

In his talks with me, always aware of the tape recorder, my father left rabbit holes at every turn, often pointing the wrong way. I think he wanted to demonstrate that we have been listening too reverently to byzantine, powerful men like him. In any case, he gave a performance, and it behooves me to be a good audience and follow his lead. I have no moral resolutions or answers of any kind. Therefore I can offer no inside knowledge about what the fabricators and guardians of the secrets have done to us or to themselves. No one will ever know, and none of it will make any sense.

About ten years ago I wrote a draft of this book, sent him a copy, and followed up with a visit to his house in Maine. I found him in bed with a bad cold, looking at me sideways with a miserable face. In a small reedy voice, he said, Hi, big guy. I dont think youre going to like what I have to say.

He had gone through the material, making careful marks with a red pencil, crossing out a name here and there, or a proceduresmall stufffor the first fifty pages. Farther in, whole paragraphs fell to the red pencil, and later still, three or four pages at a time were crossed out. Hed given up before reading to the end. He couldnt let it be published. He was afraid. He didnt want to be hounded by lawsuits or worse. After he was dead and gone, I could do whatever I wanted with it.