John Newman, General
Odom and the Sting at Dealey Plaza
John
Newman is a saint and champion among us not only because he teaches us how to
read official documents, how to translate cryptic codes and ciphers, and breaks
things down into understandable hypothesis, but for how he came to learn the
secret crafts of intelligence himself.
Before
becoming a distinguished university professor and yoga master, Newman served
honorably as a military intelligence officer and analyst and for two years as
assistant to General William Odom, who himself served as the Assistant Chief of
Staff for Intelligence (ACSI) and the National Security Agency (NSA), both of
which are super secret national intelligence agencies.
Other
than Newman’s past affiliation with Odom, the only other published reference to
Odom that I am aware of are in Thomas Powers’ “Intelligence Wars” (2004, NY
Review of Books), and they both give good instructions on military command and
control as well as what makes a good covert intelligence operation.
One
reference concerns Odom when he was the military assistant to President Carter’s
national security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, and was informed, at three o’clock
in the morning, that the Soviet Union had launched 220 missiles targeting the
United States, while the other reference concerns how the intelligence officers adapted David Mauer’s Big
Con “Sting” for covert operations.
In Powers’
“Intelligence Wars’ (p. 351) he writes: “It was in (a) climate of heightened fear
and apprehension late in the Carter administration that the American nuclear
command and control structure was upset by a series of false alarms – erroneous
reports from technical systems that an attack was under way. In the most
dramatic of these episodes the North American Air Defense Command (NORAD), from
its bomb-proof post deep beneath Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado, informed
Colonel (later General) William Odom, military assistant to Carter’s national
security advisor, Zbigniew Brezezinski, that the Soviet Union had launched 220
missiles targeted on the United States.”
“Odom,
at three o’clock in the morning, called Brzezinski, who prepared himself to
notify the President in time for the U.S. to retaliate – that is, within three
to seven minutes after the Soviet launch. Soon Odom called again to confirm the
bad news, adding that the revised, now-correct number of attacking Soviet
missiles was 2,200 – the long-dreaded, all-out, Pearl Harbor-style first strike
intended to destroy American missiles in their silos. Brzezinski did not wake
his wife, he was convinced everyone would soon be dead. But just before he was
about to call President Carter, Odom called a third time to say it was all a
mistake – someone at NORAD had loaded the computer-controlled warning system
with exercise tapes used for simulating war games. Nothing to worry about!
Brzezinski went back to bed.”
I know a
little bit about war games, as I have worked for the Army as a COB – Citizen On
the Battlefield, often playing a bad guy with the Opposition Force – but the
idea a nuclear war could be accidently started over a computer glitch is absolutely
amazing.
Hollywood
had fun with this story as they produced the fun movie “War Games,” but more
series films have been made that make the same case – “Fail Safe,” “Dr.
Strangelove – or How I Learned to Love the Bomb,” and “Seven Days in May,” all
provide believable scenarios of potential catastrophe, sometimes averted.
THE
STING
The
other Powers’ reference to General Odom in "Intelligence Wars" (p. xxxv) takes place at a cocktail
party of intelligence officers.
As
Powers relates it: “But old hands in the agent running business would not tell
you….How they might go about it was described to me indirectly a few years back
at the sixtieth birthday party for a retired intelligence officer named
Haviland Smith.”
“Among
the guests at Smith’s party,” Powers relates, “was General William Odom, who
held two big intelligence jobs before retiring – first as the Army Chief of
Staff for Intelligence (ACSI), followed by three years as director of the
National Security Agency (NSA). I asked Odom at the birthday party how he met
Smith, who had a very different sort of career.”
Powers: “Smith
spent his working life in the CIA’s Directorate for Operations (previously
called the Directorate for Plans), and he spent most of it in the field. He
told me once that the work was hard but had its pleasures – for example, the
sheer gut thrill of making a successful brush pass on the streets of Moscow while
hawk-eyed KGB watchers were on every street corner trying to make it
impossible. What Smith was trying to hand over, or retrieve, he did not tell
me; that was classified. But he made no secret of the glow of triumph that came
with success. Smith was a born operator, and Odom met him while seeking advice.”
Powers
asked Odom how he came to meet (Haviland) Smith.
“When I
was ACSI I talked to Haviland about my Army clan,” Odom told me. “It’s the
endless problem – should the Army be trying to run agents at all?”
Of
course the CIA is technically prohibited by its charter from operating within
the United States, though it manages to skirt that law whenever it seems
prudent. But the Army has no such restrictions, other than not engaging in
police functions, and Army intelligence was used extensively during civil
disturbances, especially civil rights, inter-city riots, in Memphis when MLK
was killed, and whenever a national or regional emergency requires the Army’s
mobilization. Even at Woodstock, the Army Reserves came though when the
governor called it an emergency and they provided needed food, medical services
and even a helicopter to shuttle the musicians to the stage so the show could
go on.
The Army
runs agents all over the world, and domestically, and no one seriously asks the
question whether “should the Army be trying to run agents at all?”
But the other
half of the question Odom asked Haviland Smith, “what makes a good case
officer?”
“Haviland
said, ‘Did you use that movie with Robert Redford and Paul Newman – The Sting?’”
“I said
yes. He said, ‘That’s it – the con!”
Ah, yes,
The Sting and the Big Con – which tells us that Haviland Smith took Paul
Linebarger’s class in which he assigns his students to read David Mauer’s book “The
Big Con,” which was adapted for the screen as “The Sting.”
David
Mauer, a Kentucky linguistics professor, took up a study of slang, specifically
slang used by confidence men who take pride in swindling rich marks without
using violence or actually stealing it.
It was
while compiling the unique slang of these confidence men that Mauer learned the
art of the Big Con, as it is portrayed in the movie “The Sting,” which itself is
one of the slang words that describes the moment the mark turns over the money
to the inside man in the course of a Big Con swindle.
When
Maurer saw the movie he immediately knew that the screenplay was based on his
book, and he sued the producers. And while the screenwriters claimed they never
read Mauer’s non-fictional book, they could provide no other source for the
name “Gondorf,” a primary character based on a real person who was the best
insideman in playing the Big Con. Mauer won the case.
And in
following John Newman’s analysis of the Kennedy assassination, it is imperative
that we adopt the same research technique employed by Mauer in his study – gain
the confidence of the confidence men and get them to tell us the secrets of the
Great Game that they were playing.
Instead
of the street slang they developed to secretly communicate among themselves, we
must learn the language, slang – argo used in the Great Game of intelligence
and security – learn the differences between officers, agents, operatives and
assets, the role of the cut-outs, codes, crypts and ciphers in order to read
the documents that we now have, as they are all shrouded by those whose intent
was to deceive.
As the
French intelligence agent said, what happened at Dealey Plaza was like a magic
trick – complete with smoke and mirrors, but once you understand how the magic
trick works, how the Big Con is played, it isn’t so magical after all.
And for
coming to understand this we have General Odom, Haviland Smith and Thomas
Powers to thank for giving us “The Sting” and The Big Con as examples of how a
good covert action is run and how a good case officer works. And we have John
Newman to thank for explaining it all to us in a clear and concise language we
can understand.
In his
class on covert and clandestine crafts that Paul Linebarger taught, and used “The
Big Con” as a textbook, he also told his students that these political cons
should only be used against our overseas adversaries, and not used
domestically, “or the whole system will fall apart.”
Well
since Dealey Plaza, Vietnam, Watergate, Iran-Contra and Russian/Wiki Leaks, -
the whole system has fallen apart, though you would think that since we now
know how the trick is played, we wouldn’t fall for it again, and again.
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