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Part 2 -
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Why and how was President Kennedy murdered? An article in The New York Times is the starting point in answering these questions. In the article Howard Hunt, who acknowledged that he was a bench warmer in the assassination but who may have played a greater role, sent a signal about the plot that has been long overlooked.
On December 26, 1975, the New York Times published an article titled, “Hunt Says C.I.A Had Assassin Unit” by reporter John Crewdon. The article was based on an interview that Crewdon conducted with Howard Hunt at Elgin Federal Prison in Florida where Hunt was serving his Watergate case sentence. In the article Hunt declared that he had met with Colonel Boris T. Pash, who headed the P7 branch within the CIA, in 1954 or 1955 to explore the assassination of a double agent stemming from a CIA operation involving Albania.
After the article was published, Colonel Pash contacted the New York Times that agreed to publish a subsequent article on January 8, 1976 titled, “Retired Colonel Denies Heading CIA Unit for Assassinations.”
The Times interview of Hunt followed an article that appeared in September 1975 in the Washington Post that alleged Hunt had been assigned by a White House supervisor to assassinate columnist Jack Anderson. Senator Frank Church, Chairman of the Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, promptly said his committee would investigate the charges concerning Pash and Jack Anderson.
The Committee’s interview of Hunt in prison took place on January 10, 1976. Committee professional staff member Frederick Baron conducted the interview. Key excerpts from the 82 page interview appear below.
Hunt joined the CIA in 1949. Prior that he had been with the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) during World War II. His meeting with Pash took place about six years after he joined the agency. After Hunt made internal inquiries within the agency about there being a unit assigned to assassination, he was steered to Pash.
Mr. Hunt. “When I first inquired around for the location of Colonel Pash and his assistant , the reaction I encountered was a rather jesting one, and the impression I gained was here were a couple of men who were drawing salaries and doing very little.
“And so when Colonel Pash seemed reluctant to become involved in responding affirmatively to my questions, my inference was that Colonel Pash and [excised] could well not have such a capability but for purposes of employment and status, this was the job they had. But they didn’t want anyone to call upon them to activate their particular abilities.
“Now that was my impression, and I was a little disgusted by it. I think I talked to the chief of the PP state later, who was of course well aware of the Albanian problem and I said that I didn’t get any satisfaction from Pash, but it doesn’t make any difference because we don’t have the name of the suspected individual.”
“Mr. Baron. Just to stop here for a second and clear up some of these details, were you under the impression that what you just called wet affairs, assassinations, kidnappings, or other removals from the scene of troublesome individuals was the primary function of this unit that Pash and [excised] were running?”
“Mr. Hunt. Yes. In fact the only. As far as I knew, they had no other function. If they had another function, I was never made aware of what it was.”
“Within a very short period of time after I had my interview with Mr. Pash, I was transferred to the Guatemala project, the overthrow of Guatemala.”
Mr. Baron. “As you may know, William Harvey was tasked in 1961 with setting up an executive action capability at the CIA, tasked originally by Richard Bissell to carry out assassinations if required.
“Do you have any knowledge from any source of any connection between what Harvey was doing in the early ‘60s in relation to assassination attempts of executive action capabilities and what General Pash was doing in the ‘50s, according to your story?”
Mr. Hunt: “No, I don’t draw any relationship; really…..I would like to dilate a bit on that because it never occurred to me that the agency did not have an assassination capability. This perhaps was the result of my earlier contact with Colonel Pash or what I heard about him…..”
Mr. Baron. “While we are on this limb away from the details of the Pash story, let’s follow up for a minute.
“Were you knowledgeable of any assassination operation against other foreign leaders than Castro?”
Mr. Hunt: “No, I was not.”
Mr. Baron. “And were you aware if any assassination planning or assassination actions against any domestic political leaders?”
Mr. Hunt. “No, I was not.”
Mr. Baron. “Was it your impression when you left that conversation that it was indeed a function of Colonel Pash’s to carry out assassinations like this?”
Mr. Hunt. “Yes.”
Mr. Baron. “Was there any follow-up?”
Mr. Hunt: “Albeit reluctantly, because my impression was that he was a man who really didn’t want to be disturbed. He was comfortable where he was.”
Mr. Baron. “Colonel Pash was head of P7, which was one of the CIA’s planning branches. “[Excised] who has also testified this past week on this subject, said it was his recollections of the charter of P7 was that it gave P7 responsibility for assassinations, kidnappings and other functions as higher authority may assign or as were not being performed by other units.
“Does this square with the impression that you were given by your superiors of the functions of Colonel Pash’s unit?”
Mr. Hunt. “Yes. I didn’t even know that [excised] was still alive. [Excised] then supports my functional recollections, let’s say.”
Mr. Hunt. “Well, I note that the colonel has said that he was never involved in any assassination planning between 1949 and 1951.
“Now of course in my recollection I put the period of time several years later, and I am always suspicious of non-service CIA record for a paramilitary personnel. And I would say Lucian Conein, for example, is an individual who was apparently in and out of the CIA and military capacity for a long period of time, from my own apparent devotion to this career of foreign service, in the foreign service and out of the foreign service to the Department of the Army and back.
“So a mere referral of not having been assigned to the CIA at a particular time is something that I think would bear looking into, as it did in the case of Colonel Pash.”
Mr. Baron. “Let me move you back in Allen Dulles’s heyday at the agency and ask you – and this is at a very general level, for some sort of picture first, your relationship to Dulles and secondly, the way he operated and made decisions both formally and informally.”
Mr. Hunt. “Well, my direct exposure to Allen Dulles began in the wake of the Bay of Pigs when I was transferred to his office until I guess just before his retirement, by Dick Bissell. They needed someone in Dulles’ office to – I believe I’ve covered this in my autobiography, as a matter of fact – to answer the many questions that were coming in to the agency from let’s say the ‘Green Committee,’ that was investigating the Bay of Pigs failure, and the press, the New York Times; a lot of questions were being posed to Allen Dulles and to the agency about the Bay of Pigs, and I had about as good a view of certainly the political background of the effort as anybody because I directed it for a period of time until just before, when I resigned that post.
“Mr. Dulles at that time was very harassed. Bobby Kennedy was harassing him almost daily at these meetings. The story had been put out, of course, that this was a CIA failure. None of us associated with the project, least of all Mr. Dulles, believe that for a minute. We looked upon it as a failure of nerve by the New Frontier since what had happened was that we had made – the president had given undertakings to the Cuban leadership and to our own paramilitary people, and had failed to carry them out.
“However, this fact was successfully disguised for a number of years, but Dulles and Dick Bissell paid the price.
“In any event, the Bay of Pigs cost Dulles his leadership of the agency, and I had the utmost respect for him. I was associated with him as an assistant for the special Cuban Bay of Pigs purposes, for a period of several months prior to, perhaps six months prior to his eventually retirement.
“You see, I’m an unrepentant admirer of Allen Dulles and the way we used to do business. Why do I say that? Because the way we did business during Mr. Dulles’s directorate was precisely the way we did it in OSS during General Donovan’s creation and direction of that organization. In OSS, which was Allen Dulles’s training ground as much as mine, you had the feeling that no idea ever was stifled simply for lack of hearing. General Donovan was open to all sorts of suggestions just as Allen Dulles was later, and this was a great feeling for creative minds within the Agency, during a large part of my career, that if you had a good idea, it would be reviewed, considered and accepted or rejected on its merits.”
Here is the link to the testimony of Mr. Hunt before the Senate Committee:
https://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/wp-cont ... 8Ep6YJJTS0 The foregoing review of Hunt’s testimony was taken after the Committee’s prior interview of Colonel Pash that occurred on January 7, 1976 in Washington, D.C. It made more sense for purposes of this article to learn what Hunt had to say in his interview before learning what Colonel Pasb had to say about Hunt’s allegations in the Times article.
Key excerpts from the 59 page interview appear below:
Mr. Pash: “However, throughout my activity with planning branch 7, we never had any request or any plans that we may have initiated to assassinate, as far as I know, you see.”
Mr. Baron: “So you are saying assassinations could have been mentioned in the charter or in some addition or explanation of the charter, but as far as you were concerned, it was something that was on paper and was not an active function of P7.”
Mr. Pash. “No, it wasn’t. We never once within P7, to my knowledge, discussed even the idea, should we develop something in that line. Neither assassination or kidnapping.”
Mr. Baron. “To stay on that general level for a moment, in the rest of your associations with the CIA on detail from the Army, were you aware of any discussion of assassination plans or attempts of even the suggestion that an assassination be attempted?”
Mr. Pash. “No, I never heard that.”
Mr. Baron. “But it would be your testimony that in terms of an organizational plan or even a serious request for forming an organizational plan for an assassination, you never heard such a plan with even a request?”
Mr. Pash. “No, and I have never been – it has never been discussed with me in that position of mine privately by anyone, in other words informally have you considered that maybe we could kill somebody or something like that, or I think it would good to knock off so-and-so, and you fellows think you could plan it informally or something. No, never.”
Mr. Baron. “So you are saying that if someone had come to you with such a request, you would have said, you will have to ask people at the top yourself.”
Mr. Pash. “Yes. That I think would be my position.”
Mr. Baron. “And at that time that would have been Frank Wisner, the head of OPC?”
Mr. Pash. “I would have to get a yes from OP, and then I would probably – because you can’t really, you can’t plan. You know, my branch was supposed to plan something; well, an assassination is an operation. So really we don’t plan operations, a detailed operation. We plan, you might say, I don’t know whether I am making myself clear, but we plan an activity, like –. “
Mr. Baron. “Distribution of propaganda?”
Mr. Pash. “Or like resettling the Cossacks or sending balloons over Europe, we would develop a plan for the activity, but the operational plan, the detail still was not the responsibility of my unit, you see.”
Mr. Baron. “P7 was not a place that handled double agent problem?”
Mr. Pash. “No. Again you see, that was an operational thing.”
Mr. Baron. “P7 was not a place that handled double agent questions?”
Mr. Pash. “No. Again that was an operational thing.”
Mr. Baron. “And P7 didn’t deal with the details or even in a general way did not deal with double agent problems?”
Mr. Pash. “No.”
Mr. Baron. “So you’re saying that even if Howard Hunt has the dates wrong, you don’t recall any incident like the one he describes.”
Mr. Pash. “No.”
Mr. Baron. “Where do you think Hunt may have received the impression that there was an assassination unit which you headed?”
Mr. Pash. “I don’t think anyone would have that idea. I think it is idea that I had a special type. In other words, special, catch-all type, you might say, branch, and the only explanation I can give , as you know, as you know, Hunt was a spy story writer, and he wrote many books, and a man of that type only needs a couple of little incidental type things to let his imagination run. I think it is a figment of his imagination.”
Mr. Pash. “So when I found deficiencies in the CIA, I didn’t hesitate to make it known. As a matter of fact, when I returned from Europe in 1951, General Fry who was then Chief of Personnel told me informally that the Agency didn’t particularly want me to be assigned to Washington. I do not hold that against the Agency. I know some people felt that I was too demanding of the intelligence service.”
Mr. Pash. “There is something behind this which of course because of my maybe over dedication and at the same time my knowledge of the system of the Soviet Union and the way it works, but some people might be unwittingly duped. I don’t say that, you know, this is intentional, but somewhere along the line somebody is saying, well, let’s muddy this business some more, you see, and whether Hunt got paid for this or what, or whether somebody might ask him to cook up some stories, I don’t know. I would like to find out.”
Mr. Baron. “Maybe I can just summarize my interest in this period of time. You didn’t – after the time you left the P7 and while you were still involved in the agency, you didn’t deal in any way with double agency problems, did you?”
Mr. Pasha. “No.”
Mr. Baron. “So the incident that Howard Hunt described is no more likely to have come up during this period of time than when you were in P7.”
Mr. Pasha. “No.”
Mr. Baron. “I have no further questions. I want to thank you for coming.”
Senator Schweiker, Committee member. “I concur. We thank you for your cooperation and for coming in and talking to the Committee.”
Senator Schweiker. “Would you stand and raise your right hand? Do you solemnly swear that the testimony you have given and are about to give to this Committee is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth so help you God?
Mr. Pash. “I do.”
Senator Schweiker. “Colonel, who would handle double agent problems under the set-up when you were there?”
Mr. Pash. “If I may say there were two divisions, there were maybe more. There was the research and analysis, but there was the Plans and Policy Division, and within the Plans and Policy Division were the planning branches, and I had Planning Branch 7 in the Plans and Policy Divisions. Then there was the Operational Division where all the operations, the actual operations were planned and conducted.
“I only can say that based upon the organization, the planning for that sort of type of activity would be as far as I know in the Operations Division because that was a detail, you see.”
Senator Schweiker. “How could we handle double agent problems, from your knowledge.”
Mr. Pash. “Well, if you want just theoretical, there are many ways that this could be handled. One is you give a double agent some information which the enemy knows is false and you let him carry it back, and the enemy would catch him at bringing back false information, you see. This is such as, you know, right off my head, as a reaction to your question, that is such a detailed and highly limited from the point of view of the way things can be done, that you practically have to know the individual situation, you know the double agent, you would have to know his background, you would have to know your own operational group in detail in order to expose him to his people, you see, and nobody sitting in Washington would ever devise a plan on how to have a double agent.”
Senator Schweiker. “Where would it have to be done? You mean at the field level?”
Mr. Pash. “At the field level.”
Senator Schweiker. “And that would be under operations.”
Mr. Pash. “Yes, certainly it would be under operations, and it would be within the group that is handling the double agent because they know the background of it.”
Senator Schweiker. “Now, when you say within the group, what kind of a stricture would you call that? In other words, would there be a section?”
Mr. Pash. “I don’t know what the organization in Europe was but for instance, he mentions here – I am speaking theoretically --.”
Senator Schweiker. “It is a theoretical question, I realize.”
Mr. Pash. “Say he mentions that he was with the Balkan unit. Now the Balkan unit would have an independent unit, I don’t know. It could have been a part of the Eastern European unit, with a Balkan division in it.”
Senator Schweiker. “A geographical unit.”
Mr. Pash. “Now, the man in charge of operations into the Balkans really would be the person who would supervise the planning of an operation against a double agent.”
Mr. Baron. “Was there a period between the end of P7 and the time you left the CIA where you did other things at the Agency?”
Mr. Pash. “Yes.”
Mr. Baron. “And what did you move on to after P7?”
Mr. Pash. “There was – I really don’t recall the designation of the unit. I think it concerned Eastern Europe planning because most of my activity after that, which practically was 1951, and there was a unit, a group of people of Russian background in South America that the Agency was interested in trying to contact and utilize.”
One can spend a year researching Col Pash. He worked with Earl Warren and John Mccone on the incarceration of American Japanese in World War II. He headed the Alsos project. He served as head of security of the Manhattan Project. He had an office at the Atomic Energy Commission in Tennessee and of course was assigned by the military to the CIA, which because of his background appointed him head of its Branch P7 whose assigned tasks were assassination and kidnapping. He was born in 1900 and retired from the military at age 57 in 1957, 6 years before 1963. But did he “retire?”
i appreciate this post and poster
One of the best.
I'm not so sure
Maybe you should read it again. I edited it to a shorter version and only left the pertinent information.
Why and how was President Kennedy murdered? An article in The New York Times is the starting point in answering these questions. In the article Howard Hunt, who acknowledged that he was a bench warmer in the assassination but who may have played a greater role, sent a signal about the plot that has been long overlooked.
On December 26, 1975, the New York Times published an article titled, “Hunt Says C.I.A Had Assassin Unit” by reporter John Crewdon. The article was based on an interview that Crewdon conducted with Howard Hunt at Elgin Federal Prison in Florida where Hunt was serving his Watergate case sentence. In the article Hunt declared that he had met with Colonel Boris T. Pash, who headed the P7 branch within the CIA, in 1954 or 1955 to explore the assassination of a double agent stemming from a CIA operation involving Albania.
After the article was published, Colonel Pash contacted the New York Times that agreed to publish a subsequent article on January 8, 1976 titled, “Retired Colonel Denies Heading CIA Unit for Assassinations.”
The Times interview of Hunt followed an article that appeared in September 1975 in the Washington Post that alleged Hunt had been assigned by a White House supervisor to assassinate columnist Jack Anderson. Senator Frank Church, Chairman of the Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, promptly said his committee would investigate the charges concerning Pash and Jack Anderson.
The Committee’s interview of Hunt in prison took place on January 10, 1976. Committee professional staff member Frederick Baron conducted the interview. Key excerpts from the 82 page interview appear below.
Hunt joined the CIA in 1949. Prior that he had been with the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) during World War II. His meeting with Pash took place about six years after he joined the agency. After Hunt made internal inquiries within the agency about there being a unit assigned to assassination, he was steered to Pash.
Mr. Hunt. “When I first inquired around for the location of Colonel Pash and his assistant , the reaction I encountered was a rather jesting one, and the impression I gained was here were a couple of men who were drawing salaries and doing very little.
“And so when Colonel Pash seemed reluctant to become involved in responding affirmatively to my questions, my inference was that Colonel Pash and [excised] could well not have such a capability but for purposes of employment and status, this was the job they had. But they didn’t want anyone to call upon them to activate their particular abilities.
“Now that was my impression, and I was a little disgusted by it. I think I talked to the chief of the PP state later, who was of course well aware of the Albanian problem and I said that I didn’t get any satisfaction from Pash, but it doesn’t make any difference because we don’t have the name of the suspected individual.”
“Mr. Baron. Just to stop here for a second and clear up some of these details, were you under the impression that what you just called wet affairs, assassinations, kidnappings, or other removals from the scene of troublesome individuals was the primary function of this unit that Pash and [excised] were running?”
“Mr. Hunt. Yes. In fact the only. As far as I knew, they had no other function. If they had another function, I was never made aware of what it was.”
“Within a very short period of time after I had my interview with Mr. Pash, I was transferred to the Guatemala project, the overthrow of Guatemala.”
Mr. Baron. “As you may know, William Harvey was tasked in 1961 with setting up an executive action capability at the CIA, tasked originally by Richard Bissell to carry out assassinations if required.
“Do you have any knowledge from any source of any connection between what Harvey was doing in the early ‘60s in relation to assassination attempts of executive action capabilities and what General Pash was doing in the ‘50s, according to your story?”
Mr. Hunt: “No, I don’t draw any relationship; really…..I would like to dilate a bit on that because it never occurred to me that the agency did not have an assassination capability. This perhaps was the result of my earlier contact with Colonel Pash or what I heard about him…..”
Mr. Baron. “While we are on this limb away from the details of the Pash story, let’s follow up for a minute.
“Were you knowledgeable of any assassination operation against other foreign leaders than Castro?”
Mr. Hunt: “No, I was not.”
Mr. Baron. “And were you aware if any assassination planning or assassination actions against any domestic political leaders?”
Mr. Hunt. “No, I was not.”
Mr. Baron. “Was it your impression when you left that conversation that it was indeed a function of Colonel Pash’s to carry out assassinations like this?”
Mr. Hunt. “Yes.”
Mr. Baron. “Was there any follow-up?”
Mr. Hunt: “Albeit reluctantly, because my impression was that he was a man who really didn’t want to be disturbed. He was comfortable where he was.”
Mr. Baron. “Colonel Pash was head of P7, which was one of the CIA’s planning branches. “[Excised] who has also testified this past week on this subject, said it was his recollections of the charter of P7 was that it gave P7 responsibility for assassinations, kidnappings and other functions as higher authority may assign or as were not being performed by other units.
“Does this square with the impression that you were given by your superiors of the functions of Colonel Pash’s unit?”
Mr. Hunt. “Yes. I didn’t even know that [excised] was still alive. [Excised] then supports my functional recollections, let’s say.”
Mr. Hunt. “Well, I note that the colonel has said that he was never involved in any assassination planning between 1949 and 1951.
“Now of course in my recollection I put the period of time several years later, and I am always suspicious of non-service CIA record for a paramilitary personnel. And I would say Lucian Conein, for example, is an individual who was apparently in and out of the CIA and military capacity for a long period of time, from my own apparent devotion to this career of foreign service, in the foreign service and out of the foreign service to the Department of the Army and back.
“So a mere referral of not having been assigned to the CIA at a particular time is something that I think would bear looking into, as it did in the case of Colonel Pash.”
Mr. Baron. “Let me move you back in Allen Dulles’s heyday at the agency and ask you – and this is at a very general level, for some sort of picture first, your relationship to Dulles and secondly, the way he operated and made decisions both formally and informally.”
Mr. Hunt. “Well, my direct exposure to Allen Dulles began in the wake of the Bay of Pigs when I was transferred to his office until I guess just before his retirement, by Dick Bissell. They needed someone in Dulles’ office to – I believe I’ve covered this in my autobiography, as a matter of fact – to answer the many questions that were coming in to the agency from let’s say the ‘Green Committee,’ that was investigating the Bay of Pigs failure, and the press, the New York Times; a lot of questions were being posed to Allen Dulles and to the agency about the Bay of Pigs, and I had about as good a view of certainly the political background of the effort as anybody because I directed it for a period of time until just before, when I resigned that post.
“Mr. Dulles at that time was very harassed. Bobby Kennedy was harassing him almost daily at these meetings. The story had been put out, of course, that this was a CIA failure. None of us associated with the project, least of all Mr. Dulles, believe that for a minute. We looked upon it as a failure of nerve by the New Frontier since what had happened was that we had made – the president had given undertakings to the Cuban leadership and to our own paramilitary people, and had failed to carry them out.
“However, this fact was successfully disguised for a number of years, but Dulles and Dick Bissell paid the price.
“In any event, the Bay of Pigs cost Dulles his leadership of the agency, and I had the utmost respect for him. I was associated with him as an assistant for the special Cuban Bay of Pigs purposes, for a period of several months prior to, perhaps six months prior to his eventually retirement.
“You see, I’m an unrepentant admirer of Allen Dulles and the way we used to do business. Why do I say that? Because the way we did business during Mr. Dulles’s directorate was precisely the way we did it in OSS during General Donovan’s creation and direction of that organization. In OSS, which was Allen Dulles’s training ground as much as mine, you had the feeling that no idea ever was stifled simply for lack of hearing. General Donovan was open to all sorts of suggestions just as Allen Dulles was later, and this was a great feeling for creative minds within the Agency, during a large part of my career, that if you had a good idea, it would be reviewed, considered and accepted or rejected on its merits.”
Here is the link to the testimony of Mr. Hunt before the Senate Committee:
https://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/wp-cont ... 8Ep6YJJTS0 The foregoing review of Hunt’s testimony was taken after the Committee’s prior interview of Colonel Pash that occurred on January 7, 1976 in Washington, D.C. It made more sense for purposes of this article to learn what Hunt had to say in his interview before learning what Colonel Pasb had to say about Hunt’s allegations in the Times article.
Key excerpts from the 59 page interview appear below:
Mr. Pash: “However, throughout my activity with planning branch 7, we never had any request or any plans that we may have initiated to assassinate, as far as I know, you see.”
Mr. Baron: “So you are saying assassinations could have been mentioned in the charter or in some addition or explanation of the charter, but as far as you were concerned, it was something that was on paper and was not an active function of P7.”
Mr. Pash. “No, it wasn’t. We never once within P7, to my knowledge, discussed even the idea, should we develop something in that line. Neither assassination or kidnapping.”
Mr. Baron. “To stay on that general level for a moment, in the rest of your associations with the CIA on detail from the Army, were you aware of any discussion of assassination plans or attempts of even the suggestion that an assassination be attempted?”
Mr. Pash. “No, I never heard that.”
Mr. Baron. “But it would be your testimony that in terms of an organizational plan or even a serious request for forming an organizational plan for an assassination, you never heard such a plan with even a request?”
Mr. Pash. “No, and I have never been – it has never been discussed with me in that position of mine privately by anyone, in other words informally have you considered that maybe we could kill somebody or something like that, or I think it would good to knock off so-and-so, and you fellows think you could plan it informally or something. No, never.”
Mr. Baron. “So you are saying that if someone had come to you with such a request, you would have said, you will have to ask people at the top yourself.”
Mr. Pash. “Yes. That I think would be my position.”
Mr. Baron. “And at that time that would have been Frank Wisner, the head of OPC?”
Mr. Pash. “I would have to get a yes from OP, and then I would probably – because you can’t really, you can’t plan. You know, my branch was supposed to plan something; well, an assassination is an operation. So really we don’t plan operations, a detailed operation. We plan, you might say, I don’t know whether I am making myself clear, but we plan an activity, like –. “
Mr. Baron. “Distribution of propaganda?”
Mr. Pash. “Or like resettling the Cossacks or sending balloons over Europe, we would develop a plan for the activity, but the operational plan, the detail still was not the responsibility of my unit, you see.”
Mr. Baron. “P7 was not a place that handled double agent problem?”
Mr. Pash. “No. Again you see, that was an operational thing.”
Mr. Baron. “P7 was not a place that handled double agent questions?”
Mr. Pash. “No. Again that was an operational thing.”
Mr. Baron. “And P7 didn’t deal with the details or even in a general way did not deal with double agent problems?”
Mr. Pash. “No.”
Mr. Baron. “So you’re saying that even if Howard Hunt has the dates wrong, you don’t recall any incident like the one he describes.”
Mr. Pash. “No.”
Mr. Baron. “Where do you think Hunt may have received the impression that there was an assassination unit which you headed?”
Mr. Pash. “I don’t think anyone would have that idea. I think it is idea that I had a special type. In other words, special, catch-all type, you might say, branch, and the only explanation I can give , as you know, as you know, Hunt was a spy story writer, and he wrote many books, and a man of that type only needs a couple of little incidental type things to let his imagination run. I think it is a figment of his imagination.”
Mr. Pash. “So when I found deficiencies in the CIA, I didn’t hesitate to make it known. As a matter of fact, when I returned from Europe in 1951, General Fry who was then Chief of Personnel told me informally that the Agency didn’t particularly want me to be assigned to Washington. I do not hold that against the Agency. I know some people felt that I was too demanding of the intelligence service.”
Mr. Pash. “There is something behind this which of course because of my maybe over dedication and at the same time my knowledge of the system of the Soviet Union and the way it works, but some people might be unwittingly duped. I don’t say that, you know, this is intentional, but somewhere along the line somebody is saying, well, let’s muddy this business some more, you see, and whether Hunt got paid for this or what, or whether somebody might ask him to cook up some stories, I don’t know. I would like to find out.”
Mr. Baron. “Maybe I can just summarize my interest in this period of time. You didn’t – after the time you left the P7 and while you were still involved in the agency, you didn’t deal in any way with double agency problems, did you?”
Mr. Pasha. “No.”
Mr. Baron. “So the incident that Howard Hunt described is no more likely to have come up during this period of time than when you were in P7.”
Mr. Pasha. “No.”
Mr. Baron. “I have no further questions. I want to thank you for coming.”
Senator Schweiker, Committee member. “I concur. We thank you for your cooperation and for coming in and talking to the Committee.”
Senator Schweiker. “Would you stand and raise your right hand? Do you solemnly swear that the testimony you have given and are about to give to this Committee is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth so help you God?
Mr. Pash. “I do.”
Senator Schweiker. “Colonel, who would handle double agent problems under the set-up when you were there?”
Mr. Pash. “If I may say there were two divisions, there were maybe more. There was the research and analysis, but there was the Plans and Policy Division, and within the Plans and Policy Division were the planning branches, and I had Planning Branch 7 in the Plans and Policy Divisions. Then there was the Operational Division where all the operations, the actual operations were planned and conducted.
“I only can say that based upon the organization, the planning for that sort of type of activity would be as far as I know in the Operations Division because that was a detail, you see.”
Senator Schweiker. “How could we handle double agent problems, from your knowledge.”
Mr. Pash. “Well, if you want just theoretical, there are many ways that this could be handled. One is you give a double agent some information which the enemy knows is false and you let him carry it back, and the enemy would catch him at bringing back false information, you see. This is such as, you know, right off my head, as a reaction to your question, that is such a detailed and highly limited from the point of view of the way things can be done, that you practically have to know the individual situation, you know the double agent, you would have to know his background, you would have to know your own operational group in detail in order to expose him to his people, you see, and nobody sitting in Washington would ever devise a plan on how to have a double agent.”
Senator Schweiker. “Where would it have to be done? You mean at the field level?”
Mr. Pash. “At the field level.”
Senator Schweiker. “And that would be under operations.”
Mr. Pash. “Yes, certainly it would be under operations, and it would be within the group that is handling the double agent because they know the background of it.”
Senator Schweiker. “Now, when you say within the group, what kind of a stricture would you call that? In other words, would there be a section?”
Mr. Pash. “I don’t know what the organization in Europe was but for instance, he mentions here – I am speaking theoretically --.”
Senator Schweiker. “It is a theoretical question, I realize.”
Mr. Pash. “Say he mentions that he was with the Balkan unit. Now the Balkan unit would have an independent unit, I don’t know. It could have been a part of the Eastern European unit, with a Balkan division in it.”
Senator Schweiker. “A geographical unit.”
Mr. Pash. “Now, the man in charge of operations into the Balkans really would be the person who would supervise the planning of an operation against a double agent.”
Mr. Baron. “Was there a period between the end of P7 and the time you left the CIA where you did other things at the Agency?”
Mr. Pash. “Yes.”
Mr. Baron. “And what did you move on to after P7?”
Mr. Pash. “There was – I really don’t recall the designation of the unit. I think it concerned Eastern Europe planning because most of my activity after that, which practically was 1951, and there was a unit, a group of people of Russian background in South America that the Agency was interested in trying to contact and utilize.”
One can spend a year researching Col Pash. He worked with Earl Warren and John Mccone on the incarceration of American Japanese in World War II. He headed the Alsos project. He served as head of security of the Manhattan Project. He had an office at the Atomic Energy Commission in Tennessee and of course was assigned by the military to the CIA, which because of his background appointed him head of its Branch P7 whose assigned tasks were assassination and kidnapping. He was born in 1900 and retired from the military at age 57 in 1957, 6 years before 1963. But did he “retire?”
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