CIA/East Asia Division/Manila Station

CIA/East Asia Division/Manila Station   (CIA station)
Location	Manila, the Philippines
Leader	Manila Chief of Station‎
The CIA's station covering activities in the Philippines.

The CIA station covering activities in the Philippines. A lot of counterinsurgency. Directed by the Manila Chief of Station‎.

CIA activities in the Philippines

Roland G. Simbulan, faculty at the University of the Philippines wrote (excerpts) how:

The CIA in the Philippines has engaged in countless covert operations for intervention and dirty tricks particularly in Philippine domestic politics. On top of all this is the U.S. diplomatic mission, especially the political section, which is a favorite cover for many CIA operatives. CIA front companies also provide an additional but convenient layer of cover for operatives assigned overseas. In general, wherever you find U.S. big business interests like oca Cola, Ford, Citicorp, United Fruit, Nike, etc., you also find a very active CIA. But the covers often used are diversified.

Desmond Fitzgerald, for instance, a former CIA chief of station in Manila was said to have fronted as a legitimate businessman of an American multinational company. Joseph Smith, a top CIA operative assigned to the Philippines in the early 1960s, posed as a "civilian employee" of the Clark Air Force Base's 13th Air Force Southeast Asia Regional Survey Unit. On the other hand, CIA operative Gabriel Kaplan's initial cover was really more "civilian" - with the CIA-created Asia Foundation, then later as a resident director of another CIA creation, the COMPADRE.

On the other hand, CIA operative David Sternberg fronted as a foreign correspondent for an American newspaper based in Boston, the Christian Science Monitor, when he assisted Gabriel Kaplan in managing the presidential campaign of Ramon Magsaysay in the 1950s.

For a long time, Manila has been the main station, if not the regional headquarters, of the Central Intelligence Agency for Southeast Asia. This is perhaps so because the Philippines has always been regarded as a stronghold of U.S. imperial power in Asia. Since the Americanized Filipinos were under the spell of American culture, they were easy to recruit without realizing they were committing treason to their own people and country. And from the beginning of the 20th century to 1992, there were the U.S. military bases in the Philippines, the mighty symbols and infrastructure of American military power overseas.

CIA human intelligence assets in Manila are said to have provided vital information at crucial times. According to declassified documents under the Freedom of Information Act, on Sept. 17, 1972, a CIA asset in the Philippines who was in the inner circle of Marcos informed the CIA station in Manila that Ferdinand Marcos was planning to proclaim martial law on Sept. 21, 1972. The CIA station in Manila was also provided an advance copy of Proclamation 1081 – the proclamation that declared martial law in the country - and a list of the individuals whom Marcos planned to arrest and imprison upon the declaration of martial rule.

I would like to mention -- without going into any conclusions - that, so accurate was the CIA's assessment about the Sept. 21, 1972 declaration of martial rule that it boosted the prestige of the CIA station in Manila. Upon his retirement a few years later, Henry Byroade, the American ambassador to Manila when martial law was declared, was honored by the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia -- a tribute that is said to be very rarely given to any retiring ambassador. Also, in 1982, the CIA was able to verify from a high-ranking Philippine immigration officer the names of the two doctors who visited the Philippines to treat Marcos for kidney failure, giving the CIA a clear picture of Marcos's health problems.

Col. Edward Lansdale

The loss of the U.S. bases in the Philippines was a tremendous blow to the CIA's Asian infrastructure, if not a major setback. From the mid-1950s, the U.S. bases in the Philippines served as operational headquarters for "Operation Brotherhood" which operated in Indochina under the direct supervision of the CIA's Col. Edward Lansdale and Lucien Conen, and it involved several Filipinos who were recruited and trained by the CIA. Lansdale was even appointed by former President Ramon Magsaysay as his "military adviser" and was, in fact, his speechwriter as well, who determined Magsaysay's foreign and military policy. So successful was the CIA in pulling the strings through Lansdale that in 1954, a high level U.S. committee reported that, "American policy in Southeast Asia was most effectively represented in the Philippines, where any expanded program of Western influence may best be launched."

The CIA also actively used Philippine territory, particularly Clark Air Base, for the training and launching of operatives and logistics in the late 1950s, where the U.S. covertly supported dissident Indonesian colonels in the failed armed overthrow of Indonesian President Sukarno. The CIA then established supply, training and logistical bases on several islands in the Philippines. A CIA-owned proprietary company, the Civil Air Transport, was actively used by the CIA from Philippine territory to give direct assistance to Indonesian military rebel groups attempting to overthrow the Indonesian nationalist President Bung Sukarno in the late 1950s.

U.S. military advisers of the Joint U.S. Military Advisory Group (JUSMAG) and the CIA station in Manila designed and led the bloody suppression of the peasant-based Hukbong Mapagpalaya ng Bayan (HMB) which was vehemently opposed to the post-war Parity Rights amendment and the onerous military agreements with the United States. The CIA's success in crushing the peasant-based uk rebellion in the 1950s made this operation the model for future counterinsurgency operations in Vietnam and Latin America. Colonel Lansdale and his Filipino side-kick, Col. Napoleon Valeriano, later used their counter-guerrilla experience in the Philippines for training covert operatives in Vietnam and in the U.S.-administered School of the Americas, which trained counter-guerrilla assassins for Latin America. Thus, the Philippines had become the CIA's prototype in successful covert operations and psychological warfare.

The CIA's actions and activities in its Manila station have never been limited to information gathering. Information gathering is but a part of an offensive strategy to attack, neutralize and undermine any organization, institution, personality or activity they consider a danger to the stability and power of the United States. The late nationalist Senator Claro M. Recto in the 1950s was believed to have been a victim of the CIA's dirty tricks department because of his staunch crusade against the U.S. military bases in the Philippines and advocacy for an independent economic and foreign policy for the Philippines. It is now a well-documented fact that General Ralph B. Lovett, then the CIA station chief in Manila and the U.S. ambassador Admiral Raymond A. Spruance, had discussed a plan to assassinate Recto using a vial of poison. A few years later, Recto was to die mysteriously of heart attack (though he had no known heart ailment) in Rome after an appointment with two Caucasians in business suits...Could it be that Recto was a victim of the CIA's covert operations, or what they call "executive action" against those perceived as dangerous enemies of the United States?

In the late 1980s, the CIA assigned Vietnam veteran U.S. General John Singlaub to organize anti-communist vigilante groups all over the country for mass terror, particularly as part of the Philippine government's "total war policy" against people's movements.

There is, however, a vital covert installation that the CIA was able to retain and maintain after the U.S. bases' closure: the "Regional Service Center" (RSC). Located along Roxas Boulevard in Manila at the Seafront Compound about a mile south from the U.S. Embassy, the RSC fronts as a facility of the United States Information Service (USIS), formerly called the U.S. International Communications Agency. This ultra-modern printing facility functions as a secret CIA propaganda plant. It has the ability to produce large quantities of high-quality color offset magazines, posters, leaflets and the like in at least 14 Asian languages.

A former junior case officer of the CIA, Janine Brookner, who was stationed in Manila in the late 60s and 70s, described the capital city of the Philippines as "a wild place" for CIA operatives who spent a lot of time in bars, sex shows and brothels. This was because, according to her, the standard CIA procedure for recruiting targets was "to get him drunk, get him laid, and then get him on the Agency's dole". Brookner was an attractive but determined blonde who claimed to have developed assets in both the government and the Communist Party during her assignment to the Philippines. Brookner was also a very productive recruiter who, as a handler of important assets and as a CIA case officer, claims to be able to make her targets confess everything. "You take care of them," Brookner recalls," and they tell you their fears and nightmares...I'm good at people depending on me." In fact, she was often propositioned by her targets, especially high-ranking Philippine government officials. (Starobin, 1997)

The CIA has long utilized in the Philippines sophisticated or subtle means for clandestine propaganda, such as the manipulation of trade unions and cultural organizations, rather than heavy-handed activities such as paramilitary operations, political assassinations and coups as they had done extensively in Africa, Latin America, and Vietnam. During my interview with Ralph Mc Gehee, a former CIA agent, and other former CIA operatives assigned to the Manila station, I was told that the CIA had many unheralded successes in the Philippines such as the manipulation of the trade union movement through the Asia-American Free Labor Institute (AAFLI) and through funds which were channeled through the USAID, Asia Foundation and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).

Following the ouster of Marcos, the U.S. set about to transform the "new" Armed Forces of the Philippines into an effective counterinsurgency force that would integrate military, political, economic and social initiatives, including broad "civic action" campaigns, psychological operations, military aid and training. It was a massive comeback of the low-intensity conflict years of the Magsaysay-Lansdale era! Between 1987-1990, Washington reportedly authorized stepped-up clandestine CIA operations against the Philippine Left, including a US$10 million allocation to the AFP for enhanced intelligence-gathering operations. There was also an increase in the number of CIA personnel, from 115 to 127, mostly attached as "diplomats" to the U.S. Embassy in Manila.(Oltman and Bernstein, 1992)

The CIA- linked Asia Foundation has long been active in the Philippines. It has generously funded academic seminars, researches, study tours, and conferences in most of the leading Philippine universities, most especially among many colleagues and programs at the University of the Philippines (U.P.)

 

Employees on Wikispooks

Employee	Job	Appointed	End	Description
Desmond FitzGerald	Manila Chief of Station	1955	1956
John H. Richardson Sr	Manila Chief of Station	1958	1962	Dates not confirmed

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