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Th« Washington Merry-Go-Rour.dCIA Has Its Little Problems, TooCIA LIFE I .V S.E. ASIA LIKE SUBURBIA WITH BOILED WATER; CONFI DENTIAL MEMO S A V S BRING TABLEWARE AND SHOP EARLY; WHITE HOUSE TRIES TO STOP MEMO LEAKS TO JACK ANDERSONRv JACK ANDERSONWASHINGTON — The popu lar impression of CIA men in Southeast Asia is of lean faced James Bonds talking in whisper* to Indochinese beauties in dingy bars or of bearded guer rilla experts directing Meo tribesmen in the Laotian jungit*'The real McCoy, more often, is a rumpled civil servant go ing to lard, who worries about when his refrigerator will ar rive from the States and plays bingo on Tuesday nights.This is the unromantic picture that emerges from an instrut tion sheet handed to CIA pile's leaving for Udorn. Thailand. The CIA uses a front called Air America to fly missions out of Udorn over Indochina.Instead of pressing cyanide suicide capsules upon new re cruits, the statewide briefer slip* them a bus schedule for CIA personnel between Udorn’s CIA compound, schools andbanks.“A bowling alley in Udorn has league bowling.” the CIA con fides to its pilot-agents. 'fhetr wives are given such hush-hush CIA tips as water should be boiled three to five minutes prior to drinking, but it is safe for cooking and washing dishes if it is brought to the boiling point.Wives are also advised to bring plenty of sheets and pil low' cases and chinaware. tableware and kitchen utensiles.”BUMPY MATTRESSESOther confidential informa tion provided CIA agents in eludes t h e intelligence that Thai mattresses are normally extremely hard and bumpy and that shopping is generallydone by the servants due to the early hours (6 a.m.) one must shop to insure getting fresh products.The cloak and dagger boys are told thev will have a super market, swimming pool, free movies, the Club Rendezvous (which doubles as a chapel on Sundays) and bingo on Tuesday and Saturday nights. The CIA bars are called The Pub and the Wagon Wheel and shut down at midnight.The same humdrum life style can be found at such CIA outposts as Vientiane. Laos, where CIA men usually live with their families in villas and dine at the town's few French restaurants.One lonely CIA flier, who had left his family in Florida, wor nod about their safety after reading about racial demonstra tions at home. I'm going to bring them out here where It's safe. he confided solemnly to mv associate Les Whitten in Vientiane last summer.But if the CIA living condi tions are vintage suburbia, some of the missions are dan gerous. The CIA pilots fly sup plies to CIA backed Meo tribes men in Laos hinterlands There are also more hazardous mis sion\. such as flights along the Red Chinese border and ammo deliveries to tiny airstrips in com m un i at infested countrv.FOOTNOTE: Much of the re eruiting for CIA pilots is done out of a nodern. gold carpetedoffice iti downtown Washington with “Air America” on theglass doors. One of my report ers, posing as a pilot, was inter viewed by H H. Dawson, a t fceefy man in shirt sleeves. He * laid prospects were dim rightnow, because the number offixed w ing pilots had been cutback from 600 to 500.Did You Know?FactographsNeptune, the Roman god of the sea. was originally a wafer god of little importance. He became an important deity through identification with the Greek Poseidon, especially af ter Rome was a significant maritime power.Physiocrats was a name given to ? French school of economic theorists of the latter partof the 18th century.The Parthenon was built tocelebrate the defeat of the Persians.A tiglon is the offspring of a lion and a tigresvPastoral is a term now applied to almost any kind of work depicting a more or less idealized rural life; in a stricter sense, it is a kind of poetry dealingwith shepherds and countryfolk.A wether is a castrated ram.Dawson said the basic pay is 522 98 an hour for captains,, $13.9.1 for first officers, with bo nuses for special projects ” A top CIA pilot can make as much as $100,000 a ear flying high hazard missions. In addition, station allowances run $120 a montn at Saigon. $215 at Udorn and $210 in Vientiane.NEWS LEAKSThe White House .strengthen ed the guard outside the execu live offices after we published excerpts from the confidential memos on President Nixon's government reorganiza tion plan lvThe extra guards were sup posed to intimidate our sources who. unhappily for White House security, have continued tosmuggle out newsworthy memos. Here arp excerpts, for example, from the memo to President Nixon on government decentralization;At present, the federal gov ernment administers social aod economic programs through 180 separate lines of authority to the field. A wide disparity ex ists between the percentage of high-level positions in Washington and tho«e in the field. . . This disparity has a marked effect on the authority and qua! ity of the leadership of field operation.The federal field structure is not always able to respond to administration policies.” con tinues the memo. The existing structure obscures accountabt! ity for program results. It dis perses responsibility and authority in such a way as tomake Secretarial managementdifficult. . .The autonomy of separate activities has been particularly evident in the Department of Health. Education, and W e 1-fare, although the same tendency is present in other departments. . . Specialized agen cies tend to be responsive to the special interest groups whose primary concerns are the welfare of their constituencies.To insure that the Department Secretary can manage effec lively, line authority for all departmental activities should runto him.**The reorganization task force, headed by Litton Industries' Rnv Ash. also recommended shifting more federal officials from Washington to the field and upgrading the importance of regional offices.What the President would really like to do. as we have pointed out in the past, it to increase his control over the cumbersome federal maehinerv.
Newspaper Details
Northwest Arkansas Times
Fayetteville, Arkansas, US
Fri, Feb 19, 1971
Page 30
Full Page
Clipped by
Anonymous
USA 21 May 2019
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