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Cold War – CIA Pioneer Frank Wisner – Douglas Waller
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Ep 060 – Nonfiction. Author Douglas Waller discusses his book, “The Determined Spy: The Turbulent Life and Times of CIA Pioneer Frank Wisner.”
‘Frank Wisner was one of the most powerful men in 1950s Washington, though few knew it. Reporting directly to senior U.S. officials--his work largely hidden from Congress and the public-- Wisner masterminded some of the CIA’s most daring and controversial operations in the early years of the Cold War, commanding thousands of clandestine agents around the world.
Following an early career marked by exciting escapades as a key World War II spy under General William “Wild Bill” Donovan, Wisner quickly rose through the postwar intelligence ranks to lead a newly created top-secret unit tasked--under little oversight--with overseeing massive propaganda, economic warfare, sabotage, subversion, and guerrilla operations all over the world, including such daring initiatives as the CIA-backed coups in Iran and Guatemala.
But simultaneously, Wisner faced a demon few at the time understood: bipolar disorder. When this debilitating disease resulted in his breakdown and transfer to a mental hospital, the repercussions were felt throughout Washington’s highest levels of power.
Waller’s sensitive and exhaustively researched biography is the riveting story of both Frank Wisner as a national figure who inspired a cadre of future CIA secret warriors, and also an intimate and empathetic portrait of a man whose harrowing struggle with bipolar disorder makes his impressive accomplishments on the world stage even more remarkable.’
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Transcript
Introduction to War Books Podcast and Guest
00:00:00
A.J. Woodhams
This is AJ Woodhams, host of the War Books podcast, where I interview today's best authors writing about war-related topics.
Douglas Waller and the Frank Wisner Biography
00:00:09
A.J. Woodhams
Today, I'm extremely excited to have Douglas Waller on the show for his new book, The Determined Spy, The Turbulent Life and Times of CIA Pioneer Frank Wisner.
00:00:20
A.J. Woodhams
Douglas Waller is a former correspondent for Newsweek and Time, where he covered the CIA, Pentagon, State Department, White House, and Congress. That's a lot to cover. ah He has authored seven books in the military and intelligence, including the New York Times bestseller, Wild Bill Donovan.
00:00:36
A.J. Woodhams
Doug, how are you doing today?
00:00:38
Douglas Waller
Good to be with you.
00:00:40
A.J. Woodhams
Likewise. um Always exciting to have, ah we were talking a little bit about this before we started, always exciting to have Cold War books on the show because I i find that period of time extremely fascinating.
00:00:53
A.J. Woodhams
and So thank you.
Wisner's Role and Mental Health Discussion
00:00:55
A.J. Woodhams
ah the ah The first question that i like to ask folks when they come on As if in your own words, can you just tell us what is your book about?
00:01:04
Douglas Waller
This is a story of ah somebody who you wouldn't know today. And back in the 1950s, you wouldn't have known what he did and the importance of it unless you had the security clearance ah to have that information.
00:01:20
Douglas Waller
His name is Frank Wisner. He was one of the original spy masters within the CIA. ah And he was the one that put together ah the major operations in the 1950s, covert operations. He's really the father of covert covert action for the CIA.
00:01:40
Douglas Waller
ah And as I say, it became a very powerful a man in Washington, although behind the scenes, very few people knew it. um And I found him to be a fascinating character because he And I've gravitated toward these type of bio bio biographical subjects where they are ah yeah they're they can be very polarizing. People revere them or people hated them.
00:02:09
Douglas Waller
And that was the case with with with Wisner. ah And as I say, he was involved in a lot of controversial subjects and we can get into it. He also suffered from a severe mental mental illness that eventually did him in.
00:02:21
A.J. Woodhams
to And, you know, that's actually what I found um so fascinating about this story. And so as as you just mentioned, um so he he he has he as a mental health condition, bipolar ah disorder, um ends up taking his own life um in the 1960s.
00:02:38
Douglas Waller
Right. right
00:02:42
A.J. Woodhams
And um what I really appreciate about this book And in general, maybe just kind of like going back and thinking about the greatest generation, you know, the the stories that we hear about the greatest generation is often, you know, stiff upper lip and, you know, no problem here. Like, we're just going to, we're going to, we're going to move forward. we're going to soldier on.
00:03:05
A.J. Woodhams
And that's just not the reality of how human beings are. And i really appreciated the mental health aspect that you brought to this book and talking about somebody who, you know, by, any any kind of outsider looking in, certainly at the beginning of his career, this guy's got the life that that people aspire to.
00:03:25
A.J. Woodhams
he's ah um He comes from ah a wealthy family. like He's educated. He's got a law degree. He's in World War II doing all these very important, impressive covert missions. He's got this beautiful family, um great career. And on the outside looking in, you would think, oh, wow, what why what a guy, but it's one of those things where you really know, you know, everybody's struggling with demons. And um obviously you you brought that to light in the book.
00:03:53
A.J. Woodhams
and And I appreciate that.
CIA's Approach to Mental Health during Wisner's Time
00:03:55
Douglas Waller
Well, it ah and you have to go back to the 1950s and even today to a degree, ah bipolar disorder is something that's not all that well understood.
00:04:05
Douglas Waller
course, it's far more treatable today than it was back in Wisner's time. But back in Wisner's time, ah it got passed off as ah something you just needed to get over, you know, go get a rest, you know, suck it up ah and, you know, and you'll feel better.
00:04:21
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah.
00:04:24
Douglas Waller
ah To some degree, the the the CIA took a fairly enlightened view toward mental mental illness. It saw it as a war casualty ah for its operatives. So it had a staff of psychiatrists who ah you know would be there to treat ah officers who who had mental and illness to get them back to work, unlike in other private business or government where they're shunned and something scandalous.
00:04:51
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah. And i i I thought it was interesting, actually, because you write that um in the nineteen fifty s the CIA almost expected their employees to have and alcoholism or um you know some some kind of mental health you know some some mental health crises that needed addressed.
00:05:04
Douglas Waller
Oh yeah.
00:05:11
A.J. Woodhams
And I thought that that was, that's such an interesting, i don't know, kind of mirror to hold up against yourself as an organization thinking the kind of work that you do is going to cause these types of ah mental health
Wisner's Contributions to CIA Covert Operations
00:05:22
Douglas Waller
Well, the CIA back then, consider it was at war at war with it with the Soviet Union.
00:05:23
A.J. Woodhams
episodes.
00:05:28
A.J. Woodhams
Yep.
00:05:29
Douglas Waller
It's a cold war, a very a secret war. ah And so it saw these people as battle casualties in that war. ah What it didn't realize and what people around Wisner didn't realize was that he wasn't a victim of the Cold War so much as he was a victim of ah of ah a disease, a genetically, very often genetically inherited biological disease that mixes, ah you know,
00:05:48
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah.
00:05:56
Douglas Waller
yeah severe mania with severe depression ah into something that, you know unless properly treated, can be just totally debilitating. And can result many times in suicide.
00:06:11
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah. Well, and I want to um i want to dive into like his his life story and and start from the beginning. But before I do that, to to maybe just kind of frame, um I didn't know about Frank Wiesner before um opening up your book, um to to frame the man for the audience, what would you say like his his legacy today is? like what What do you think he's most well known for?
00:06:36
Douglas Waller
He. ah really was the pioneer of ah covert U.S. action, ah political warfare. He he really ah formed that.
00:06:47
Douglas Waller
He was also a founding father of the CIA's clandestine service. These are the spies that go out there. ah He also... ah was a pioneer in what's called liaison relationships that the CIA has.
00:07:03
Douglas Waller
ah These are relationships with other spy agencies, allied spy agencies. And Wisner really put that together as head head of the CIA.
00:07:15
Douglas Waller
ah I mean, at one point in the 1950s, he ah commanded something like 6,000 operatives working overseas, men and women in very covert operations And if you think about that, 6,000, that's an army brigade's worth of people ah that he was running in command of around the world.
00:07:39
Douglas Waller
They made a lot of mistakes, ah but he was the one out there really you know fighting what we thought was a life or death struggle with the Soviet Union.
00:07:48
A.J. Woodhams
So when we, today, when we think of, I think maybe the the reputation, the worldwide reputation of the CIA is like going out and overthrowing governments or, you know back maybe you know old CIA, you know overthrowing governments, um you know fomenting coups, um all all these different types of subversion and subversion and sabotage.
00:08:10
A.J. Woodhams
When we think of that, when the world thinks of that, Frank Wisner's the guy.
00:08:13
Douglas Waller
Yeah, he was the original ah one that was putting that together. And he had very little oversight over what he was doing.
Formation of the CIA and Wisner's Intelligence Career
00:08:23
Douglas Waller
Although the presidents he operated under, Harry Truman and then Dwight Eisenhower, were delighted with his work.
00:08:30
Douglas Waller
ah
00:08:31
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah. Yeah.
00:08:31
Douglas Waller
they you know And they they had kind of a broad knowledge of what he was up to, and they basically gave him a blank check. And he took that blank check, and he and his lieutenants ran with it. um so
00:08:42
A.J. Woodhams
yeah
00:08:44
Douglas Waller
But you know there's there's ah there's this kind of a you know old wives' tale or so story that, well, the CIA, these were rogue warriors who were out there operating on their own.
00:08:54
Douglas Waller
Well, to a degree they were, but they they were still under the control and sanctions of the White House and the top national security leadership. ah
00:09:04
A.J. Woodhams
Well, i I definitely want to get in.
00:09:05
Douglas Waller
and They didn't want to be all the details, but the primary objective, they were behind.
00:09:06
A.J. Woodhams
Go ahead.
00:09:09
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah.
00:09:12
A.J. Woodhams
Well, I definitely want to get into um this is the beginning of the CIA and and the how the CIA is formed, I think is a very interesting story.
00:09:16
Douglas Waller
Right.
00:09:19
A.J. Woodhams
And I definitely want to get into that. um But first, um what let's back way up to the beginning. i kind of talked about his background a little bit, but um just talk about Frank Wisner, his upbringing.
00:09:30
A.J. Woodhams
the kind of person he is, his his personality. um give Give us a little background information on the man.
00:09:38
Douglas Waller
he was He was a son of the South. He was born in 1909 in Laurel, Mississippi. ah His father was a lumber baron, ah was ah ah ah part of a very prominent family, well off,
00:09:54
Douglas Waller
and financial financially that harvested ah you know forest in the Mississippi area. He was a ah precocious child, ah fairly smart, but he had kind of uneven grades and he could be rambunctious as a child.
00:10:12
Douglas Waller
That may have been the early signs of some type of you know, bipolar disorder that would come later. His mother ah ah was believed to have suffered from depression, although it was never really clinically diagnosed back then.
00:10:26
Douglas Waller
ah But, you know, you know, that could have been where, you know, Wisner was genetically infected, or he could just be a busy kid. um He had uneven grades in high school.
00:10:40
Douglas Waller
His father managed to lobby to get him into ah you the University of Virginia, where he actually excelled as not only as a student, but also a track star. At one point, even considering joining the Olympic team in track and field.
00:10:55
Douglas Waller
He went on from UVA undergraduate to UVA law school ah and had stellar grades, superb. ah And then from UVA law school, he joined a venerable a law firm in New York ah ah with a lot of high-priced clients.
00:11:14
Douglas Waller
It was there in New York that he met his wife, Polly Knowles. who was a very outspoken and very you know assertive a daughter of ah of a New York business businessman.
00:11:27
Douglas Waller
ah And Wisner, I say, did well as a lawyer. It turned out, though, he became bored silly with law. ah And he He could see that a world war was on the horizon. This is in the late 30s.
00:11:44
Douglas Waller
ah And he could ah see that, you know, ah Adolf Hitler ah in Germany, which he had visited, ah was going to be a threat. He eventually decided to to enlist in the U.S. Navy as a Lieutenant Junior Grade, a lawyer there, and ah ended up being kind of bored with that work. He was basically just clipping articles for a small intelligence unit.
00:12:14
Douglas Waller
In fact, he told his son he was in command of a cutter, except the cutter was just a pair of scissors. um He from from the Navy, then he gravitated toward what was called the Office of Strategic Services, which was a spy agency ah that Franklin Roosevelt set up that was run by William Wild Bill Donovan, who had been a World War One hero.
00:12:38
Douglas Waller
and a prominent lawyer in New York and set up this ah this espionage agency for for Franklin Roosevelt, which was kind of remarkable in the sense because Donovan was a diehard Republican ah and in fact had run for governor of New York at one time to succeed ah Roosevelt.
00:12:48
A.J. Woodhams
Thank you.
00:13:01
Douglas Waller
In fact, Donovan and Roosevelt tended to ended up trading a lot of barbs and ah na said a lot of nasty things about each other. Donovan accused Roosevelt of being a quote, a Hyde Park faker, which today sounds pretty mild, but back then, that was fighting words.
00:13:21
A.J. Woodhams
Sure.
00:13:21
Douglas Waller
oh But I mentioned that just because ah Roosevelt, though, ah in in lead in the lead up to the Pearl pearl attack in Pearl Harbor 1941,
00:13:34
Douglas Waller
was preparing the country for war. ah Donovan and realized it you know he needed to do that, and he was part of the internationalist wing back then of the Republican Party that said that we needed to ah you know guy put together ah you know the the war machine and start getting involved involved in this.
00:13:54
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah. Now, do you do you think that um Frank Wisner, so you mentioned that he's he's just kind of bored silly with everything that he's doing. And you do describe him later in the book as an idea guy. Like he's he's a creative kind of person, not like a creative in the, you know, he's an artist or anything, but like,
00:14:13
A.J. Woodhams
you know he's He's imaginative and and somebody who who really kind of um i guess you know puts himself into these these imaginations, if you want to call it that.
00:14:26
A.J. Woodhams
Do you think he he gravitated towards ah the OSS because he'd just been so bored with everything else?
00:14:32
Douglas Waller
Oh, he did. And he knew Donovan. They had kind of palled around a little bit in New York politics. ah And Wisner was the kind of guy that Donovan was looking for.
00:14:42
Douglas Waller
ah He was wanting wanting to attract the country's best and brightest. ah he He once was attributed with saying that he wanted to recruit a PhD who could win a bar fight.
00:14:54
Douglas Waller
ah Wisner was not an Ivy Leaguer. ah A lot of them were attracted to Donovan's organization, but he was from Wall Street, which was Donovan's home for turf.
00:15:05
Douglas Waller
um he He was a lawyer and he was you know smart, ah aggressive, could ah ah think on his own two feet. um And so eventually in 1943, Wisner moved to the OSS.
00:15:19
Douglas Waller
don ah wizner moved to the oss yeah He was put through only two weeks of training. They shipped him out on a truck to a farm and in Maryland where they went through a quickie espionage and spy training in two weeks, which wasn't enough really to to train him to be a
Wisner's Early Spy Training and Effectiveness
00:15:40
Douglas Waller
proficient spy. He had to ah have a lot more training.
00:15:44
Douglas Waller
But, oh, I'm sorry.
00:15:44
A.J. Woodhams
I was just going to ask real quick, what's two weeks of spy training in World War II? What does that consist of?
00:15:52
Douglas Waller
Well, it was things like ah he he learned how to you know ah read a map, use a compass. ah He was taught some of the the fancy gadgets that the OSS had developed, like pistols with silencers, K-pills that you'd slip into an enemy agent's drink to knock him out, ah learning to fight dirty. In fact, they learned that from the British.
00:16:15
Douglas Waller
ah you know, how to gouge the eyes or karate chap but just below the throat for a quick quick kill, how to set up safe houses, how to surveillance targets.
00:16:26
Douglas Waller
um And they taught them all this. and They worked them, you know, day and night. um They went into the training with a given ah a fake name.
00:16:37
Douglas Waller
ah So nobody else in the training knew their name just in case they ever got captured. They couldn't be traced back to the OSS. ah And they even you know had to cut out the water markings on their suits and everything so that nobody could you know ah figure out who who they were.
00:16:55
Douglas Waller
ah ah At the same time, they were given the task of trying to figure out who their colleagues were. in this training. ah and ah yeah mean um mean they they did For example, they did a ah practice spy run, which was called schemes, where they'd send the these young men out to try and penetrate local defense industries and steal secrets from them.
00:17:23
Douglas Waller
ah which very often got them into trouble with a local sheriff you that would pick them up, you know and they'd take them back to Donovan's organization, basically tell him don't do this again.
00:17:30
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah.
00:17:35
Douglas Waller
but And some of them even tried to impersonate White House aides to gain gain secrets. But it was all to try and you know teach them how to you know think on their feet, how to operate clandestinely, which Wisner actually did a fairly good job in the two weeks' time.
00:17:50
Douglas Waller
And he had enough training from this, they they figured, to send him overseas to Cairo, Egypt for his first assignment with the OSS.
00:17:59
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah, so he gets to he gets to Cairo and um ah he he kind of gets a reputation in Cairo and in in Istanbul, which is after Cairo. He gets his reputation as somebody who who comes into these chaotic, messy situations, cleans things up, ah makes things run efficiently.
00:18:09
Douglas Waller
Mm-hmm.
00:18:19
A.J. Woodhams
in And maybe ah a reformer is a good way to put it.
00:18:22
Douglas Waller
Right.
00:18:22
A.J. Woodhams
um And then he goes to to Romania, which I think is, and you write this too, um that that really set the trajectory ah for his life and his his career.
00:18:33
A.J. Woodhams
um talk Talk a little bit about um those first experiences. I'm especially interested in Romania, but maybe there's, I mean, there is stuff to say about Cairo and Istanbul, but talk about kind of those formative World War II experiences. I'm leaving out Berlin too, because after Romania, he goes to Berlin when the World War is almost over.
00:18:53
Douglas Waller
He was, yeah, he was, he developed ah as a a ah reputation as a fixer for
00:18:53
A.J. Woodhams
But talk about that experience.
Wisner's WWII Intelligence Missions
00:19:00
Douglas Waller
Donovan. He could go in with a truck for a troubled operation and get it turned around.
00:19:05
Douglas Waller
ah He was also ah a, he became very savvy and in kind of the bureaucratic wars the intelligence community had, ah you know, had to fight.
00:19:16
Douglas Waller
So for example, when he was in Cairo, Donovan had sent out ah ah the Stuff Shirt Admiral ah to inspect the different stations. And the Admiral came into Cairo breathing fire.
00:19:29
Douglas Waller
Wisner took him to Madame Badia's nightclub and put him in the loving hands of a belly dancer. ah And the Admiral woke up the next morning on Wisner's dining room table with no recollection of what happened the night before, but he figured it was not good.
00:19:46
Douglas Waller
ah And he gave Wisner's operation at Sterling Reviews back to Washington as a result. When Wisner got to Turkey, ah the Istanbul station was being run by a guy named Lanning Paki McFarland, who was a savings and loan executive, a Republican pal of Donovan, who Donovan put in there, who had absolutely no experience as a spy. And keep in mind, Istanbul was a spy haven where the Allied and Axis intelligence services ah had a vigorous operation going on.
00:20:20
Douglas Waller
ah But McFarlane had no sense of security. In fact, the first time Wisner met him was in a ah ah Turkish club that he went to. was supposed to thought he was going to discreetly meet him.
00:20:37
Douglas Waller
ah But all of a sudden the stage to the club ah open curtains open up and out come a line of Turkish chorus chorus girls with Paki McFarlane in the middle dressed in drag singing Boo Boo Baby I'm a Spy.
00:20:54
Douglas Waller
which i absolutely horrified Wisner. Well, he cleaned up. They sent Paki home. They cleaned up Istanbul. um And from there, he went to Romania, as you mentioned, to Bucharest, and became ah the sole U.S. intelligence representative in that country.
00:21:13
Douglas Waller
Romania, keep in mind, had been allied with the Germans, ah but this was getting toward the end of the war and they could see which way the war was going. And so they switched sides to the Americans and the Soviets.
00:21:26
Douglas Waller
The Soviets came into Romania. It was one of the east Eastern Bloc countries that the Soviets would ah occupy. And Wisner's job at that point was to collect German material from Nazi and the Abwehr and the other intelligence, German intelligence services.
00:21:44
Douglas Waller
He was also in charge of of retrieving Allied spymen have been um allied airmen who had been shot down over ah Romania. And most importantly importantly, he was charged secretly by Donovan to begin spying on the Russians. Because Donovan, even though he wanted to be allies with the Russian intelligence service, realized, as Wisner did, that these were our future enemies and we needed to collect intelligence on them.
00:22:13
Douglas Waller
And even if they were friends, that we needed to collect intelligence on them.
00:22:17
A.J. Woodhams
I found that very interesting because, you know World War II is not even over yet. um You know, we're still allies with the Soviets and Frank Wisner, who actually gets a reputation, even at this time, as being more anti-Soviet than most people.
00:22:31
Douglas Waller
Mm-hmm. Right. Mm-hmm.
00:22:31
A.J. Woodhams
I think at one point, and Bill Donovan writes a letter saying, you got to tone it down with the anti-Soviet stuff.
00:22:35
Douglas Waller
right
00:22:37
A.J. Woodhams
um But I find it so interesting that... um All of a sudden, we have we you know Hitler is still in power, yet we have pivoted to the Soviets as being, or at least in the the eyes of Frank Wisner, being the enemy.
00:22:53
A.J. Woodhams
and
00:22:53
Douglas Waller
Yeah, and Wisner could see the Soviets were playing hardball in Bucharest. I mean, they they gradually took over Romania, ah stripped the country of its ah industrial agricultural capability, and shipped thousands and thousands of ah ethnic Germans in Romania.
00:23:12
Douglas Waller
back to the Soviet Union to work in slave labor camps and the mines. Wisner saw all this and it deeply infected affected him. ah he This was a future enemy that that he realized.
00:23:21
A.J. Woodhams
yeah
00:23:25
Douglas Waller
And he carried on this view when he came his next assignment, which was in Berlin.
00:23:30
A.J. Woodhams
And I believe i believe it um you mentioned ethnic Germans were were shipped back. um I believe one of the things that really ah impacts him is he sees that the the Soviets are they're they're not um discriminating between Romanians who were for the Nazis and Romanians who were against the Nazis and actually worked with him.
00:23:55
A.J. Woodhams
And i think you're right that he pulled some families out of these trains that helped him in his operations. And, um you know, obviously, and it's like, you know, thousands of people being shipped off, he can't do that much. But that seems to have really been and the start of his life's work.
00:24:14
Douglas Waller
It did. and and And colleagues back then thought, well, he was maybe too obsessed, had almost a religious fervor against the Soviets. And they thought, well, maybe that's what was the cause of of later mental illness.
00:24:28
Douglas Waller
But Wisner actually had a lot to hate with what the Soviets were doing ah in in in Romania and other Eastern European countries. ah And after the when the war ends, Wisner becomes part of ah the OSS team that goes into occupied Germany to set up an intelligence operation.
00:24:51
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah.
00:24:51
Douglas Waller
And
00:24:52
A.J. Woodhams
We'll talk about talk about that a little bit more because that I think is um really fascinating. um Just set the scene. you know we've got i think he's Frank Wisner is there so soon after the surrender, i believe you're right, that he goes into the into Hitler's bunker and still sees like Hitler's blood on a couch.
00:25:12
A.J. Woodhams
um he's Talk about the aftermath and and and how that what he's seeing around him.
00:25:13
Douglas Waller
Oh, yeah. Yeah.
00:25:18
Douglas Waller
He did. He went into Hitler's bunker. A lot lot of ah OSS operatives did, too. I mean, it became kind of a tourist trap for him. And he went into the Reichstag and and got souvenirs there.
00:25:32
Douglas Waller
ah he ah they so The OSS teams set up its ah headquarters in Wiesbaden near Stuttgart. um And actually in ah in a wine factory is where they set up and there was still wine stocked in the cellars.
00:25:49
Douglas Waller
And they actually set up their own officers club and sold champagne for $0.10 a glass, which was a pretty good price back then. ah He organized then ah outposts in in Berlin, which was totally devastated, and other German cities ah with the goal the with with a number of different missions.
00:26:15
Douglas Waller
Number one, to round up German war criminals, as we're still out there, ah to retrieve ah the artwork that Germans like Hermann Göring had looted previously.
00:26:26
Douglas Waller
And then ah also very, very important ah to begin spying on the Russians, ah the Soviets in their zone. They also were under secret orders from Donovan to spy on the British and the French in their zone too.
00:26:45
Douglas Waller
Donovan figured that the British and the French were spying on him, so he was going to return the favor. So basically everybody's snooping on everybody else ah in this new Cold War. ah But for for for Wisner, he was in charge of the intelligence operation. that He had several hundred officers scattered around that that that he oversaw in this post-war period.
00:27:12
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah.
00:27:14
A.J. Woodhams
well um ah ah Well, I'm going to have to skip over a little bit in the story because i want to get to like the I want to get to the formation of um the CIA and all that.
00:27:22
Douglas Waller
Right.
00:27:24
A.J. Woodhams
But um the CliffsNotes version is he gets a little bit disillusioned, I believe, in Berlin. He comes back and he's bored again, right? like he um
00:27:33
Douglas Waller
He is.
00:27:34
A.J. Woodhams
yeah
00:27:34
Douglas Waller
And keep in mind, ah Harry Truman, who succeeds Roosevelt in April of 1945, Truman didn't think much of Donovan. Those two guys never really got along. I mean, on the one hand, you had a successful Wall Street ah Republican lawyer in Donovan.
00:27:57
Douglas Waller
And on the other side side, you had a diehard Democrat who had been a failed Missouri haberdasher under Truman. So Truman shut down the OSS and parceled out its functions to the ah to the ah Pentagon and and the State Department.
00:28:14
Douglas Waller
Wisner hung on for a while, but finally got ah disgusted with the cutbacks that were happening in the in in his operation.
00:28:27
Douglas Waller
I mean, um one of the breaking tipping points for for him came when he asked the Pentagon to send him or supply him the money for several hundred bicycles.
00:28:40
Douglas Waller
that he needed for his spies to ride around occupied areas to see what the Russians were doing. And penny pinching bureaucrats in the Pentagon said, no, you can't have that money ah for it.
Wisner's Mental Health Issues and CIA Leadership
00:28:52
Douglas Waller
And, you Wisner thought that was basically it. And he he returned home.
00:28:55
A.J. Woodhams
yeah yeah
00:28:56
Douglas Waller
ah went back into law practice ah in New York to his old old firm there. Again, grew bored with what he was doing and found a way to get himself back into the U.S.
00:29:05
A.J. Woodhams
yeah
00:29:10
Douglas Waller
government, into into intelligence work.
00:29:14
A.J. Woodhams
oh Now, was there any, and in all these high stress situations ah during World War II for him, were there any signs of his future mental health crises that had um become apparent to other people?
00:29:28
Douglas Waller
There wasn't. there were There were very slight signs. So I remember one of the documents I looked at was the doctor's report who gave him a physical and an examination after he came back from ah from Europe. They did that with all OSS officers.
00:29:45
Douglas Waller
And there was some hint there that, ah you know, you know, or raise kind of the issue that he seemed, seemed to be somebody who was pretty wild tightly wound.
00:29:57
Douglas Waller
Uh, but that could be, uh, uh, passed off to, uh, you know, just, you know, being a, you know, a hard charger, uh,
00:29:57
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah. Yeah.
00:30:05
A.J. Woodhams
yeah
00:30:05
Douglas Waller
you know an up-and-comer. In the few years after that, particularly after the CIA form is formed in 1947, and in in a couple years after that,
00:30:18
Douglas Waller
wsner ah was afflicted with what psychiatrists today call hypomania, which is someone yeah who's overly energetic, uh, very charismatic, a go-getter, you know, constant ideas, uh, coming out of his head, uh, and, you know, a workaholic, uh, but that describes half of Washington.
00:30:36
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah.
00:30:42
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah. Yeah.
00:30:43
Douglas Waller
So, uh, Nobody thought that was unusual. They thought that this was just a high flyer, but it is a ah ah phase of of the bipolar disorder that could occur, but nobody paid much attention to that.
00:30:58
A.J. Woodhams
Well, um let's let's talk about the formation of the CIA and Frank Wisner's involvement. So um you just mentioned he moved down to Washington, D.C. He's about 40-ish in life at this point, um I believe.
00:31:10
Douglas Waller
ahead.
00:31:12
A.J. Woodhams
And we'll we'll tell tell tell the story about um the CIA, how it gets started, and what Frank Wisner's involvement, not just with the CIA, but intelligence at the beginning is.
00:31:23
Douglas Waller
Well, even before the agency was formed, Wisner came down to Washington and eventually finagled his way into a job as head of what was called the Office of Policy Coordination, which has a very bland sounding name.
00:31:37
Douglas Waller
It totally hides what it was doing, but it was basically set ah being set up to fight ah the Soviets the way the Soviets were fighting us or the way we perceived they were fighting us ah with ah shadow warfare, you know dirty tricks, propaganda,
00:31:53
A.J. Woodhams
yeah
00:31:54
Douglas Waller
No,
00:31:54
A.J. Woodhams
It's such an interesting office too, because nobody really wanted it. and that The State Department didn't want it.
00:31:59
Douglas Waller
no but...
00:31:59
A.J. Woodhams
ah The CIA didn't really. mean, they kind of wanted it, but they wanted to like not associate themselves with it.
00:32:05
Douglas Waller
Yeah, it was ah it you know it was something that they thought would give them diplomatic trouble, although they wanted to have control over it.
00:32:12
Douglas Waller
ah In 1947, Truman forms the CIA. ah Truman realized he needed some type of intelligence service. He wasn't blind to the threats out there with the Cold War threats.
00:32:12
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah.
00:32:25
Douglas Waller
He just didn't want Donovan or his OSS cowboys having anything to do with it. So he set up the CIA, put in military officers to head it up, And eventually Wisner's Office of Policy Coordination, ah well initially it was operating outside of the CIA. Eventually it got folded folded into the CIA, but it was always kind of a force of its own.
00:32:51
Douglas Waller
um And it you know was only under somewhat control by the CIA director or anybody in the Pentagon or the State Department.
00:32:51
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah.
00:33:02
Douglas Waller
by their choice. I mean, it wasn't anybody they're you know clamoring to you know tell me everything you have you're doing are because they didn't.
00:33:04
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah.
00:33:12
Douglas Waller
ah Basically, what they told Wisner was, well, brief us on the operations you think are significant that we need to know. Well, that gave a lot of leeway for Wisner.
00:33:20
A.J. Woodhams
yeah
00:33:23
Douglas Waller
You could drive a truck through that loopho loophole. oh
00:33:26
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah.
00:33:26
Douglas Waller
And you know so there was a lot he left out and in some of his briefings.
CIA Leadership and Cold War Intelligence Gaps
00:33:31
A.J. Woodhams
Well, you know, something that's interesting that I've not, I've not thought about this before, um but you wrote about it that had had the decision not been made to disband the OSS and to maintain a ah spy agency after World War two ah had had there been just like immediately a CIA, there might not have been such a fixation in a mania on the Soviet Union Because at the time, people thought that the Soviet Union was this big, powerful, well-oiled machine, um menacing and put together.
00:34:06
A.J. Woodhams
But the reality was that that was not the case. like Things were were kind of falling apart. And had we had an intelligence service that could tell us that that wasn't the case, maybe things wouldn't have gotten quite out of control at the beginning.
00:34:19
Douglas Waller
Well, it could have ah because, you know, I mean, Stalin at this point, who was a ruthless dictator, though, was was also realized that, you know, he he had a devastated country that had to be rebuilt ah and that the Americans and the British...
00:34:36
Douglas Waller
and the French alliance there was far more powerful than he was. ah But you know he he his forces had acted you know quite brutally in Eastern Europe and set up their own, as what's been called, the sphere of influence.
00:34:53
Douglas Waller
ah So he gave a lot. ah to the ah to to the Americans to worry about. In fact, at one point um the on July 1, 1952, and i've written this down before um The Pentagon produced a memo, ah well, produced a memo predicting when the Soviets would invade Western Europe.
00:35:17
Douglas Waller
And it was on that day, July 1, 1952. Of course, nothing happened that day, but ah it tells you the level of concern that ah you know there was for this you know you know threat ah existential threat ah that we perceived for the Soviets.
00:35:35
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
00:35:37
Douglas Waller
If there had been a ah ah full functioning analytical ah you know operation operation and clandestine service at that time. It could have told Truman and even later Eisenhower that the Soviets weren't 10 feet tall, that there were weaknesses there, and that yes, they were an existential threat an enemy.
00:35:55
A.J. Woodhams
yeah
00:35:58
A.J. Woodhams
yeah
00:36:04
Douglas Waller
and an enemy But they weren't going to be you know eight invading anytime soon, particularly right after the war when the US had a nuclear monopoly.
00:36:15
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah. So that the CIA, 1947, I think, is is created.
00:36:21
Douglas Waller
Right.
00:36:22
A.J. Woodhams
um I actually didn't realize this. For whatever reason, I thought that Alan Dulles was just always the first CIA director, but it was not.
00:36:30
Douglas Waller
Yeah.
00:36:31
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah.
00:36:31
Douglas Waller
No, he wasn't. ah there were There were several generals that were put in charge ah in the beginning. Then, Beatle Smith, who was Eisenhower's chief of staff during the war, was put in charge of the CIA. He was an excellent director, really you know shaped up the organization.
Significant CIA Operations Led by Wisner
00:37:02
Douglas Waller
and It wasn't until after that that Dulles, who had been Beatle Smith's deputy, became a CIA director. And Wisner moved up to what was called the deputy director for operations.
00:37:02
A.J. Woodhams
To.
00:37:16
Douglas Waller
And that was the clandestine service that that Wisner headed up.
00:37:21
A.J. Woodhams
Well, let's talk about some of the um the operations, some of the things that he's he's famous for. um he so i so Iran and Guatemala are like are two of the famous coups that he's instrumental in.
00:37:36
Douglas Waller
Yeah.
00:37:38
A.J. Woodhams
Talk about some of these operations that he puts together.
00:37:42
Douglas Waller
Initially, and he was ordered ordered to get get going quickly, and he rushed a lot of operations that he actually needed more time to put together. He was a chaotic manager to begin with.
00:37:56
Douglas Waller
so they ah and he And he had what i I've mentioned to audiences before. He had kind of what what you call a batting average. ah Some of the operations succeeded, ah particularly his psychological propaganda operations against the Russians and drove them nuts.
00:38:11
Douglas Waller
ah but some failed. Well,
00:38:14
A.J. Woodhams
What are some examples of of some of those operations?
00:38:18
Douglas Waller
well ah Radio Free Europe ah which beamed into and Radio Liberty, which beamed into the Eastern Bloc countries and the and the Soviet Union, um ah were fairly successful, at least in unnerving the Russians.
00:38:37
Douglas Waller
Now, how much they actually accomplished is hard to see, but ah the Russians worried about them and did all they could to shut them down. The operations that didn't do well were where they tried to infiltrate in guerrillas and spies ah into different countries to foment ah rebellions or just give the Russians a hard time.
00:39:00
Douglas Waller
The one country where Wisner spent a lot of time was in Albania with an operation code named BG Fiend, where he sent in um Albanian operatives.
00:39:12
Douglas Waller
to try and overthrow or the Albanian government. What he didn't realize that even though Albania was a dirt poor country and really didn't have much much of much value, it still had a very good counter espionage and espionage service that had no problem rounding up Wisner's operatives ah or chasing them across the border or to and to another country or kill or killing them.
00:39:41
Douglas Waller
ah So, a lot of the Eastern European operations didn't didn't fare too well. In Asia, Wisner organized operations that went in to during the Korean War.
00:39:55
Douglas Waller
um Didn't have a whole lot of luck there, and also into Communist China, where he you know, threw a lot of things in there that didn't didn't do well.
00:40:06
Douglas Waller
ah In the Philippines, he he he actually had a success there with Colonel Edward Lansdale, who was one of Wisner's aides, who set up a counter counterinsurgency operation that enjoyed a lot of success against the Huck communist guerrillas.
00:40:27
Douglas Waller
um Lansdale was a former advertising executive, um ah but who had ah a good sense of how to mobilize public opinion and everything. He also could play hardball.
00:40:40
Douglas Waller
One of the things that Lansdale liked to do was ah he'd get a Huck Rebel who had been a casualty. in some type of action. And he'd have two holes punctud punctured into his neck to make it look to the Huck's comrades like he'd been attacked by a vampire. And I don't know how how much effect this had, but ah Lansdale succeeded very well in the Philippines in getting ah you know that that that Huck rebellion
00:41:16
Douglas Waller
overcoming that. He didn't do so well later, though, in Vietnam. So there are presses and minuses. We threw a lawful lot of ah officers into or the CIA did into into into Asia who weren't really trained in the region, who were just, you know, working on the fly.
00:41:35
A.J. Woodhams
ah Talk a little bit about um Frank Wisner's involvement with Iran, because that's obviously today we're living with the ah the consequences of that.
00:41:44
Douglas Waller
Yeah, we are. Well, ah it was all, I mean, the Eisenhower administration, this is in 1953, realized that they weren't getting anywhere in Eastern Europe ah and even in Asia with the with the clandestine warfare.
00:42:00
Douglas Waller
And they started to ah they started to switch sites to third world areas ah that they felt were would be a a communist threat, and particularly third world leaders who were neutral in their positions, who didn't really havet want to have much to do with either ah the communist bloc or the Western bloc. ah and Back then, ah yeah you couldn't be a neutral in the eyesise Eisenhower mission the administration. either They believed you had to be with us or against us.
00:42:33
Douglas Waller
ah There were no in-betweeners allowed. ah in Iran, there eventually was elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh, who ah was was a neutral and was ah was willing to tolerate a very small communist ah group within his country, and who really ticked off the the British when he nationalized
00:43:08
Douglas Waller
ah the oil industry there and took it under Iranian control. After all, it was Iranian oil. ah And Wisner and Eisenhower and John Foster Dulles, who was the Secretary of State then, oh and Alan Dulles, all were convinced that Mossadegh was a threat to the United States and he had to go.
00:43:33
Douglas Waller
And Mosaddegh was kind of an oddball, as it was. i mean, he he, for example, liked to hold cabinet meetings in his bedroom with wearing his gray pajamas.
00:43:45
Douglas Waller
um And so he had and he had a lot of enemies within Iran. ah Wisner sent Kermit Roosevelt, who was a ah ah grandson of Theodore Roosevelt, too to Iran to work with the opposition to Mosaddegh and eventually got him overthrown, got him toppled ah and brought back in the Shah of Iran, Shah Reza Pahlavi.
00:44:14
Douglas Waller
and Iran as its as its leader. Of course, in the case of the Shah, he he eventually would proved to be pretty corrupt and everything and was toppled by the Islamic,
00:44:31
Douglas Waller
the Mullahs. oh And, you know, Iran became a base camp for world terrorism after that.
00:44:43
Douglas Waller
of
00:44:43
A.J. Woodhams
Now, would it be fair to say that Frank Wisner's worldview I think probably like a lot of um of our of American leadership at that time. Would it be fair to say that his worldview is anything that is anti-Soviet, doesn't matter if you're corrupt, it doesn't matter if you're a bad leader or even if you have bad ideas, if you're anti-Soviet and pro-American, then that's good enough to put you in power.
00:45:10
A.J. Woodhams
Is it fair to say that's his worldview?
00:45:12
Douglas Waller
Yeah, it really was. And that was the American worldview, too. I mean, it's kind of ironic that, you know, the United States for a country that was born out of revolution and the overthrow of a colonial power ah since then is
00:45:28
Douglas Waller
pretty consistently supported ah non-revolutionary governments, the status quo.
00:45:33
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah.
00:45:34
Douglas Waller
ah And that certainly was the case, for example, in Guatemala, which was the next operation that Wisner took personal control over. Jacobo Arbenz, the president of ah Guatemala,
00:45:48
Douglas Waller
and and his glamorous wife, who's from salvad El Salvador, um were willing to tolerate, again, a ah very small and ineffective communist minority in the country.
00:46:00
Douglas Waller
And Arbenz was basically a nationalist who ah you know wanted to take control of yeah the yeah industries that have been taken over by the outside, in particular, the United Fruit Country that control the harvesting and production ah of bananas in the country.
00:46:17
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah.
00:46:22
Douglas Waller
ah He was deemed to have to go by Wisner and Eisenhower and and the Dulles brothers. And so they they worked with ah military elements to overthrow Arbenz and it ushered in a succession of of of military dictators into Guatemala for decades after that, that resulted in hundreds of thousands of poor Guatemalans being killed or disappeared by by right-wing governments.
00:46:55
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah.
00:46:58
A.J. Woodhams
Well, and and I want I want to um i want to ah kind of transition and and end the interview talking about Frank Wisner's personal life. But before we go in that direction, you know, he, he, he died in 1965. at any point did he ever at any point have any regrets about the way that, you know, this, this, the, the, the office that he ran, this was his baby, so to speak. This was his brainchild.
00:47:28
A.J. Woodhams
And a lot of these operations were, were his ideas. Did he ever have any regrets about any of these operations?
00:47:35
Douglas Waller
Not really. ah It was ah theorized by a lot of armchair psychiatrists back then in the CIA that the the failed operations were what caused him to, you know,
00:47:53
Douglas Waller
develop this mental disorder when actually it was a physical, um you know, ailment, you know, that caused it.
00:48:05
Douglas Waller
um He I mean, he realized he could tell you know which operations weren't weren't working right and you know tried try to cut them loose.
00:48:17
Douglas Waller
In some cases, you know kept them going, for for example, in Albania because they considered it of a training ground for him.
00:48:22
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah. Yeah.
00:48:25
Douglas Waller
ah But yeah, I mean, on on on on Iran and Guatemala, you know they turned out to be you know failures in a long strategic sense.
Wisner's Personal Life and Mental Health Crisis
00:48:39
Douglas Waller
But back then, Eisenhower was absolutely delighted with the results of them because here he was able to go in and topple two regimes that they didn't like and not have to send in the Marines or tanks or whatever, or battleships, which have been terribly expensive. it you know these These coups were real cheap to run.
00:48:59
A.J. Woodhams
Sure. Yeah. Well, um let's let's talk about his personal life and the end of his life. we We kind of, in the interest of telling the the story of the history of ah the CIA, and we neglected to mention that he he bought a farm when he moved to D.C.
00:49:17
A.J. Woodhams
originally, which I might actually kind of think that could be a sign of a midlife crisis, but I don't think you put that into words um in the book.
00:49:25
Douglas Waller
Yeah, it was a farm near Galena in Maryland on the eastern shore.
00:49:29
A.J. Woodhams
This is the late or mid, right when he comes back from the war, I think.
00:49:30
Douglas Waller
no Yeah, it's ah it's it's the late nineteen forty s and he worked the farm you know throughout it was a he kind of wanted to emulate the Jeffersonian ideal of a gentleman gentleman farmer.
00:49:47
Douglas Waller
um And this was this was a working farm and he, when he had time, he'd go out there on the weekends. He never relaxed and he would get on a tractor and, you know, go out and plow acres of farmland or work in the garden, or whatever.
00:50:05
Douglas Waller
ah And the farm basically lost money, but he, he He enjoyed it thoroughly being out there.
00:50:13
A.J. Woodhams
yeah
00:50:14
Douglas Waller
His kids like being out there with him because they they could be with him. Yeah.
00:50:20
A.J. Woodhams
I think the idea initially was that he got the farm because it was like a almost like because he did have another residence in DC in Georgetown.
00:50:27
Douglas Waller
Yeah.
00:50:27
A.J. Woodhams
and He got the farm initially is like kind of a place to relax. But he would never relax when he's there. He's always working.
00:50:34
Douglas Waller
He never did. ah and you know he would even cook cook chicken gumbo when in other moments. um so but And it was kind of a refuge for him to bring out you know people he was cultivating.
00:50:51
Douglas Waller
They'd go out duck hunting around there.
00:50:53
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah.
00:50:54
Douglas Waller
ah So he had he always had guests there that he was enjoying their company or working them over.
00:51:04
A.J. Woodhams
Now, what was the, um as far as his mental health goes, when did and and when did that really start to impact his work and his family? And ultimately, what what did that, ah you opened the book with ah an anecdote about his son taking him to the hospital.
00:51:17
Douglas Waller
He...
00:51:20
A.J. Woodhams
But just talk about how that manifested and grew.
00:51:24
Douglas Waller
he ah It really, the genetic time bomb and him went off ah in in in the late 1950s with the the Hungarian Revolution that the the Russians brutally crushed.
00:51:40
Douglas Waller
And also the Suez Canal Crisis, where the British and the French, joined by the Israelis, launched a military operation at the same time to take over the Suez Canal, which the Egyptian president,
00:51:55
Douglas Waller
President Nasser had nationalized. ah
00:52:01
Douglas Waller
Wisner was in Europe on a tour ah when this all happened and basically had suffered a nervous breakdown. ah he he He would move from ah station to station in Europe, giving out orders. Some of them were incomprehensible, staying up till five in the morning and, you know, getting only about two two or three hours sleep during the day ah and basically became unhinged.
00:52:37
Douglas Waller
I mean, by the by the time he got to ah you know, or at the end of it, you know, he he was in exhausted, pretty bad shape.
00:52:47
Douglas Waller
He came back to the US after that and was fine for a while, but then would have more episodes. of of mania or manic depression.
00:53:03
Douglas Waller
ah This is kind of a ah type of disease that'll hibernate and then spring back and forth. ah Finally, 1958, his wife, Polly, his wife polly and other colleagues convinced him ah that he needed to check himself into a mental institution. And he went to the Shepard Pratt Institute, which was a excellent mental facility, still is to this day, ah was one of the pioneers or innovators back then. And he stayed for more a little more than 170 days there at the Shepard Pratt Institute and was given
00:53:42
Douglas Waller
ah shock therapy, which was the only treatment they had back then for manic depression, which is what he was diagnosed as having.
00:53:53
Douglas Waller
oh And the shock therapy actually worked well. I mean, there's this kind of a myth that from the Jack Nicholson movie, One Flew Over the cooo Cuckoo's Nest, that shock therapy was really painful, you know, and but it actually wasn't. He was under anesthesia and everything, and it helped him out.
00:54:12
Douglas Waller
The problem though was that the the shock therapy just couldn't last forever. let me It wasn't a long-term type cure.
00:54:25
Douglas Waller
Pharmacology had not caught up with this disease. It wouldn't be until the 1970s that there would be drugs that could be used to treat the shock therapy.
00:54:40
Douglas Waller
the bipolar disorder
00:54:42
A.J. Woodhams
what What were some of the ah the reactions among his, you know, he's ah a leader in the, he's a very powerful person in Washington. He's a leader in the intelligence community. What are the reactions of his peers and his colleagues in the intelligence community to this, to his mental health problems?
00:54:59
Douglas Waller
Well, they thought, and it was not only the reaction of his colleagues, but also fellow doctors that you know he just needed to rest. you know He needed to suck it up, you know get his act straight, which isn't what what happens. you know Left untreated, bipolar disorder can you just spiral out of control for a person.
00:55:17
Douglas Waller
ah Once he got stabilized with the shock therapy and you know basically you know sitting on a couch talking to a psychiatrist all day, So he went back to the agency and was given the job of station chief of the London station, which was a good posting for him.
00:55:37
Douglas Waller
ah They realized he couldn't go back to heading up the entire clandestine service. That was just too big a role for him to try and take on. um So he and Polly went to London and were there for several years as he he was as as a station chief.
00:55:54
Douglas Waller
and did real well because he Wisner was basically an Anglophile. you know He liked all things British. In fact, he bought his suits from a British tailor, most of them.
00:56:06
Douglas Waller
But eventually the shock therapy came. I mean, the the bipolar disorder, the disease came back and he had to have shock therapy from London doctors there.
00:56:19
Douglas Waller
Finally, the... the agency brought him home.
Reflections on Wisner's Life and Legacy
00:56:24
Douglas Waller
And he eventually retired from that and was for about five years you know in retirement doing you know contract work and whatever until it hit him again and ah overcame him.
00:56:25
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah.
00:56:25
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah.
00:56:40
A.J. Woodhams
Well, um ah Doug's been a wonderful interview. and My last question here is, what do you think we have and today to learn from Frank Wisner and from your book and from this story?
00:56:54
A.J. Woodhams
what What are the takeaways that you'd like the audience to know?
00:56:57
Douglas Waller
Well, you know and I've been asked this before. We are ah involved right now in what I think is the second Cold War with the Russians, with Vladimir Putin putin in in the Ukraine.
00:57:15
Douglas Waller
Frank Wisner was in on the first Cold War. about 70 years ago. ah I think yeah you you can you can learn a lot about how ah you know how how how how to fight in the shadows, how very often long-term consequences can be, you know things can not turn out the way way you predict.
00:57:46
Douglas Waller
The covert operations for a president are kind of a know ah neat tool. Nobody you know you don't have anybody in Congress really you know bothering you. got to You have to send in a finding back then. You didn't you have to do that.
00:58:00
Douglas Waller
ah And it was a cheap way to do ah do foreign policy with nobody snooping around. It's less so today, but we still, i mean, you know that the CIA along with the Pentagon still engage in you know assassinations overseas terrorist leaders.
00:58:20
Douglas Waller
We do that regularly. ah So yeah covert operations. I guess it can be really cool, but you better know what you're doing when you're doing it.
00:58:33
Douglas Waller
And you better think through the the long-term consequences of it, not
Podcast Conclusion and Book Promotion
00:58:37
Douglas Waller
just what's going to happen yeah the next year.
00:58:37
A.J. Woodhams
yeah
00:58:40
A.J. Woodhams
Yeah. ah Well, Douglas Waller, The Determined Spy, The Turbulent Life and Times of CIA Pioneer Frank Wisner. ah Go buy a copy. Go check it out from your library.
00:58:51
A.J. Woodhams
um it's ah It's a really good story. It's a long book. um ah talking Talking about you know ah sleep deprivation, i got to say this one kept me up ah kind of late. I enjoyed it a lot.
00:59:03
A.J. Woodhams
um So I encourage everyone to go out and ah and check this story out. And Doug, thank you so much for your time today.
00:59:11
Douglas Waller
It's good talking to you
00:59:12
A.J. Woodhams
Thank you.