Last stop in London
Allen Dulles and John McCone in the UK National Archives
My latest subscriber profile focuses on Allen Dulles, the Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) who exercised a formative influence on the CIA for 8 years from 1953 until 1961, when the failure of a CIA-planned invasion of Cuba effectively ended his career.
This period between the debacle at the Bay of Pigs in April 1961 and Dulles’ retirement the following November is covered in some of the most interesting files from my recent trawl of CIA-related material in the British National Archives, thanks to several visits Dulles made to London before his departure.
In September, he met with the head of the Ministry of Defence’s Joint Intelligence Bureau, Major General Sir Kenneth Strong, who had served as Eisenhower’s intelligence chief during the Second World War. Strong’s account of the meeting is a striking document of the tensions within the Anglo-American relationship.
Noting that Dulles was ‘a very great friend of this country and has rendered untold help to British intelligence’, Strong warned that ‘I would not like it known that I was making any criticism which I might disturb these cordial and fruitful relations.’1
He nevertheless went on to express his fears that the Kennedy administration was taking a hard line on Cold War flashpoints such as Cuba and Berlin.
Dulles, speaking privately within J.I.B., gave us the firm impression that the attitude of at least some Americans in the Berlin dispute must be even more intransigent than I suspected. He said he was sick and tired of hearing people say that we should approach Krushchev with proposals: Krushchev should approach us. In any case, more than half of what Krushchev said could not be believed. He (Krushchev) was a bully and a supporter of Hitler techniques (he retracted later on the Hitler analogy). We pointed out that his description of Krushchev was in fact very similar to the views Krushchev proclaimed about the West; Krushchev also regarded the West as a bully. Dulles brushed aside these sorts of comparisons. We should press our demands and make no concessions to him since he was quite sure that Russia did not intend “to go to war”. It was insupportable that the West should be asked to recognise a man like Ulbricht.
The Americans were becoming fed up with people always wanting to negotiate and there was a large and growing element which favoured isolationism. Did I understand that if we persisted in our attitude there was a distinct possibility of this happening?
One source of tension during this period was that the Soviet nuclear threat against Britain was different from that facing the USA, an issue Dulles touched on.
He revealed that the “highest authority” in the U.S. has requested, within the last day or so, an estimate of the I.C.B.M. threat to the U.S. The estimate had shown a downward revision in the number of I.C.B.M.’s available. This coincided with an estimate of the existence of a larger number of M.R.B.M.’s (1,000 mile range) available against Europe. He agreed that the M.R.B.M. situation represented the reality behind Krushchev’s remarks that the Europeans were hostages to Russia. Nevertheless, I suggest that the new I.C.B.M. estimate with a reduced threat to the U.S. must tend to harden the US attitude towards Russia.
I must admit that the vehemence and somewhat sweeping nature of Dulles’ remarks took me by surprise. I can only imagine that they must reflect the thinking of at least some sections in Washington.
Despite Dulles’ pugnacity, he was more of a known quantity in London than his successor, John McCone, who accompanied him on a valedictory visit to London in November. British fears about the new DCI were reflected in a note to the Prime Minister from his private secretary for foreign affairs, Philip de Zulueta.
Sir Solly Zuckerman told me yesterday that he had been distressed to find among some of his American contacts in the Atomic Energy Commission a good deal of disquiet at Mr McCone’s appointment as head of C.I.A. Apparently the Atomic Energy Commission regard Mr. McCone as an unscrupulous intriguer, determined to get his own way even though his views conflict with those of the administration as a whole. Consequently they expect that C.I.A. will become more independent under Mr. McCone and that American intelligence reports will be more biased even than they have been in the past.
My own view is that however true this assessment of Mr. McCone may be, he is unlikely greatly to change the familiar pattern of C.I.A. activity with which we are only too familiar.2
A Foreign Office brief for the Prime Minister was fulsome about Dulles’ contribution, crediting him for the fact that ‘relations between the Central Intelligence Agency and British departments have never been closer or more cordial.’ A paragraph on McCone is more guarded:
Mr. McCone, his successor, was head of the Atomic Energy Commission from the middle of 1958 to January 1960. He comes from California and made his mark in industry and ship-building. It is well to remember that Mr. McCone does not believe that Russia ever really accepted the test moratorium and was always on the side of those who urged the president to restart testing.3
The picture that emerges from these documents is consistent with Richard Aldrich’s conclusion that ‘Anglo-American relations were not always as smooth as they outwardly appeared’ in the early 1960s.4 Earlier British fears that the Americans would launch a pre-emptive war were receding. However, the Soviets themselves were questioning the effectiveness of their nuclear deterrent in the face of the reconnaissance capabilities of the American U2 spyplane. Britain had some insight into those perceptions through the MI6 mole Oleg Penkovsky.
One thing the British did not learn from Penkovsky was that the Soviets were placing nuclear missiles in Cuba. The suspicion of CIA hawkishness apparent from the British files may explain why Kenneth Strong was slow to believe the missiles were there until presented with detailed evidence by the agency’s deputy director for intelligence, Ray Cline.5
The course of the Cuba Missile Crisis in late 1962 nevertheless vindicated, and compounded, British fears of strategic instability.
UK National Archives PREM 11/3614. Kenneth Strong, 20 December 1961.
UK National Archives PREM 11/4591. Philip de Zulueta to Prime Minister, 7 October 1961.
UK National Archives PREM 11/4591. Brief attached to Michael Wilmshurst to Philip de Zulueta, 31 October 1961.
Richard J. Aldrich, The Hidden Hand: Britain, America and Cold War Secret Intelligence, John Murray Publishers, London, 2001, p.617.
Aldrich, p.621.
Excellent as always.