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THE CIA'S SECRET WAR IN TIBET -- FAVORED SON |
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Chapter 12: Favored Son Lyle Brown had been busy kicking cargo to guerrilla outposts in the highlands of northeastern Laos when he got the call to report to Takhli in early December. Fresh to Southeast Asia after a tour training Cuban paratroopers for the Bay of Pigs, he exemplified the rugged ideals that the CIA saw in the aerial firefighting community. "We were good under adverse conditions," he reflected. "We didn't need a martini, but would be just as happy with some C-rations and a cup of coffee around a campfire." [1] Linking up with Tibet veterans Shep Johnson and Andy Andersen, Brown squeezed into the back of a packed Hercules piloted by Air America's Bill Welk. Behind them on the flight line was a similarly loaded C-130 with another three smoke jumpers. [2] Following the same flight path as the previous Mustang mission, the pair of aircraft skirted the Tibet-Nepal border. From several kilometers away, the pilots could see an enormous blazing "I" not far from the drop zone used seven months earlier. On the ground, Lobsang Jamba, cyanide ampoule dangling roguishly from a cord around his neck, was among the 400-man reception party. They had arrived at the prescribed location two days earlier but had radioed an eleventh-hour delay to Thailand because the original time had coincided with nine bad omens converging on the Tibetan calendar. "The next day there fortunately were ten good omens to ward them off," he recalled. [3] Better prepared this time than they had been in April, the Tibetans had brought along sixty mules and horses. As pallets impacted the snow, the guerrillas descended on the bundles and divided them among pack animals and porters. By week's end, they were back in Mustang and taking inventory. Besides 600 Garands, the load included eight 60mm mortars, eight 75mm recoilless rifles, and some Bren light machine guns. "There was also a color catalog," said one Tibetan officer, "showing photos of what would come in the future." [4] The extra weapons were sorely needed to keep pace with the fast-expanding Mustang force. Doubling on paper, it now counted sixteen light companies, nearly all commanded by Hale graduates. Between the contents of the first and second drops, half of each company was armed with rifles. Each company, too, received a single Bren and either a mortar or a recoilless rifle. Those not issued rifles or assigned to the twelve-man heavy weapons squad were given a single grenade. In that way, each guerrilla was armed in some fashion. Although these developments gave the CIA cause for cheer, the same could not be said for the situation back in Colorado. With more than a dozen Mustang leaders still languishing at Hale, the agency had planned to whisk them back to Asia during the first week of December and appeal to Pakistan once more for permission to use its territory as a conduit. Almost from the start, plans went awry. Late on the night of 6 December, Hale instructor Don Cesare had gotten behind the wheel of the camp's bus and loaded the remaining Tibetans. As had been done many times in the recent past, Cesare intended to get them to Peterson Field by 0600 hours the next morning and inside a waiting C-124 Globemaster well before most of Colorado Springs awoke. But snow-packed roads had conspired against him, forcing two prolonged stops en route. By the time he pulled into the airport, he was two hours behind schedule. An early-morning crowd had already arrived for work, including the operators of a flying school that owned a hangar near the parked C-124. Afraid of public exposure, the CIA had brought along a squad of overzealous military policemen, who promptly detained sixty-five civilians at gunpoint and ordered a pair of telephone repairmen off some nearby poles. If that were not enough to raise eyebrows, things quickly worsened. At the local police office, Sheriff Earl Sullivan received a sketchy telephoned account of the bizarre happenings at Peterson. Mindful that there had been a killing at the air base the previous fall, Sullivan issued shotguns to his two deputies and raced to the field at breakneck speed. Amazingly, they too were ordered to halt at the airport entrance by military policemen, who explained that the C-124 was being loaded with classified material. [5] The cover story hardly held up to scrutiny. By the following day, a local radio station had it partially right when it reported that forty-five Orientals had been spotted wearing military clothes near the transport plane. That same afternoon, a front-page story in the Colorado Springs Gazette Telegraph entitled "Gestapo Tactics at Peterson Field Bring Apology from Army" noted that Asians in battle fatigues had disembarked from a bus with curtains over the windows. [6] The wire services picked up the story, and it soon got the attention of the Washington bureau of the New York Times. When a correspondent called the Pentagon for comment, he was phoned back by a flustered official from the office of Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara. Almost without prompting, the official relayed details of the Hale operation, then pleaded with the journalist to drop the story. The gamble worked: by taking the correspondent into its confidence, the Pentagon had made it ethically difficult for the reporter to reveal the story. By the following week, the Peterson episode had been quietly forgotten. [7] The CIA thus narrowly avoided embarrassing exposure, but for the Tibetans in the C-124, the frustration was only beginning. Cesare escorted them as far as Okinawa, where what was intended as a brief transit stop extended into days and then weeks. The reason for this was to be found at the southern end of the subcontinent, where Indian troops had invaded and annexed the small Portuguese enclave of Goa during the third week of December. Although the United States voiced criticism of this action -- privately, Kennedy was amused that Nehru, a long-time proponent of peaceful coexistence, had seen fit to launch a military offensive -- Pakistan's Ayub Khan was hardly satisfied. If Washington could refuse to help when a European ally suffered at India's hand, Khan was more doubtful than ever that the youthful U.S. president would come to Pakistan's aid in a pinch. As U.S.-Pakistani relations plunged to a new low, use of East Pakistan for the Tibet project was well and truly out of the cards. Rather than retracing his steps back to the vacant Camp Hale, Cesare diverted his Tibetans to a remote corner of the CIA complex on the island of Saipan. With no chance for overland infiltration anytime soon, he stocked up on movies and began looking for new subject matter -- how to drive jeeps and trucks, for instance -- to keep his students preoccupied for the long wait ahead. [8] *** Infiltration of the Mustang leaders was not the only part of the Tibet project on hold. In a concession to Ambassador Galbraith, Kennedy had given the nod to the December supply drop only on the condition that future drops would include the participation of the Indian government. Such support, knew the CIA, was a long shot. Although Indian spymaster Mullik quietly reaffirmed his tacit approval of the agency's efforts in 1961, and had earlier claimed that Nehru held similar beliefs, his influence with the aging prime minister was more than offset by India's ambitious and abrasive defense minister, Krishna Menon. [9] Known for his frequent baiting of the West, Menon was a devout Fabian socialist whose take on nonalignment fell decidedly left of center. As India's longtime representative to the United Nations, he had gone out of his way to sabotage Gyalo's efforts at winning votes sympathetic to Tibet. As defense minister, he was openly biased toward purchases of Soviet hardware, even when his generals requested Western alternatives. And given his soft stance toward China -- as well as his close links with Nehru -- Indo-U.S. cooperation on the Tibet front was an impossibility as long as Menon enjoyed his pronounced clout. Unable to meet Kennedy's requirement of Indian participation, the CIA knew that additional drops to Mustang were out of the question for the time being. The Tibet Task Force, as a result, came to reflect the resupply stand-down. With Hale vacant and no new students scheduled for arrival, all the camp's instructors had been reassigned, with the exception of Cesare at Saipan. The last two Hale-based Tibetan translators were sent to language class at Georgetown University as a reward for services rendered. Roger McCarthy had already left his seat as head of the task force in December 1961 for an assignment on Taiwan, leaving Ken Knaus to assume command over a shadow of the former program. "There was talk of even closing down the task force all together," remembers Cesare. [10] Coincidentally, there was also a changing of the guard on the subcontinent. During May 1962, India station chief Harry Rositzke finished his tour and was replaced by David Blee. Like Rositzke, Blee was an OSS veteran with service in both the South Asian and Southeast Asian theaters. Blee, too, was a Harvard (and Stanford) graduate and had practiced law for a year before joining the agency at its inception. Arriving along with Blee was a new deputy station chief, William Grimsley. On his second India tour (he had been posted to New Delhi between 1956 and 1958), Grimsley had found himself embroiled in the Tibet turf-war even before his departure from Washington. Three months earlier, in February 1962, Richard Bissell, the head of covert operations, had belatedly fallen as the last major casualty of the Bay of Pigs fiasco. Promoted in Bissell's place was his operations officer and longtime rival, Richard Helms. Known for his instinctive caution and political acumen, Helms saw the divisional rivalries over Tibet as an internal sore that needed resolution and closure. Reflecting the realities on the ground -- that paramilitary activity inside Tibet was almost nil, and liaison with the Tibetan leadership took place on Indian soil -- the new covert operations chief was inclined to favor ceding more control to the Near East Division. Following from this decision, Grimsley was called into Helms's office and given a second hat. Although a residual Tibet Task Force would remain under the Far East Division, Grimsley would take over from the departing Howard Bane as the primary Tibet case officer in India. This move effectively put Tibet operations directly under the control of the Near East, something Des FitzGerald was sure to protest. Afraid of intentional media exposure by detractors from within the Far East Division, Helms charged James Angleton, the CIA's infamous mole hunter and counterintelligence chief, with leak control. "I was personally briefed by Angleton," said Grimsley, "to report any resistance from Far East types to the conversion." [11] Though largely emasculated, the Tibet Task Force was not yet out. In June 1962, officers from the task force traveled to Darjeeling to rendezvous with Mustang commander Baba Yeshi. To start on a good note, they congratulated the chieftain for the previous year's jeep ambush and offered an Omega chronograph in appreciation. But as talk shifted to the future, the secret tryst proved a bust. Speaking for his Tibetans, Baba Yeshi demanded a long list of supplies before his men would shift their action inside Tibet. As far as the CIA was concerned, it wanted the guerrillas to start launching reconnaissance teams north of the Brahmaputra without further preconditions. "It was basically a chicken or the egg scenario " said task force chief Knaus. With no promises offered by either camp, the CIA men returned to Washington with little hope. "Guerrilla harassment continues," read an agency assessment prepared at month's end, "but poses no serious threat to [Beijing's] control." It even noted signs of reduced popular discontent against the Chinese. [12] Based on this sentiment and after further consultations at the highest levels of government, the Kennedy administration in late summer decided that the entire future of the Mustang resistance- -- not merely supply drops -- would hinge on the unlikely prospect of active, not tacit, Indian support. Baba Yeshi, meanwhile, went back to his perch at Mustang. There his men poured their energies into improving their respective tent camps. Eight of the companies had set up quarters in a line along the eastern side of the Kali Gandaki; the remainder ran in a mirror arrangement on the opposite side of the river. Aside from this, they did little else, not launching even a single foray following the previous October's satchel snatch. [13] For all intents and purposes, the epitaph to the Tibet project was ready to be scripted. *** On the evening of Saturday, 8 September, Brigadier John Dalvi was soaking in a hot bath when the phone rang. As commander of India's 7th Infantry Brigade, he was charged with defense of the western NEFA sector, which encompassed the exfiltration route used by the Dalai Lama in 1959. That very afternoon, he had played a round of golf at the newly laid course at Tezpur, the same tea planters' town in Assam where the international media had awaited the arrival of the exiled monarch three years earlier. Stirred from his moment of relaxation, Dalvi at first tried to ignore the incessant ringing. But having a premonition that it might be important, he wrested himself from the tub. It was a wise choice. On the other end of the phone was his deputy assistant adjutant calling from Towang, the town where the Dalai Lama had first paused after crossing from Tibet. Dalvi listened as the adjutant passed on a frantic message from a nearby outpost. Six hundred Chinese soldiers had surrounded the position earlier that day, cutting bridges and threatening the water supply. They needed help, and they needed it fast. [14] Though Dalvi was shocked by the incursion, the Chinese maneuvers in NEFA were not wholly unexpected. Ever since the PLA had invaded Tibet, China and India had been bickering about the delineation of their common border. Basing their claims on a 1914 treaty -- of which Tibet was a party -- India placed its NEFA boundary generally along the Himalayan watershed. China at times appeared ready to accept this but had most recently produced maps that showed much of NEFA under its control. Complicating matters was a second area of contested territory at the westernmost extreme of the Indo Tibet border along the desolate Ladakh Range. For India, NEFA was of strategic concern. It was home to 800,000 primitive tribesmen, and most of NEFA's residents were ethnically and culturally closer to the Tibetans than to the people of the Indian plains. Sharing few bonds with the rest of the country, they often regarded lowlanders with suspicion. The Indian government was cognizant of this and had been trying to win their favor with comprehensive development projects, but budgetary constraints sharply limited realization of these plans. And with the poor economic situation compounded by the disruption of trade following China's closure of the Indo-Tibet border -- as well as the rumor mill spinning apocryphal tales of laudable progress inside Tibet -- India was correctly concerned about loyalties in this part of the country. [15] By contrast, India's Ladakh claim -- based on "historical truths," said New Delhi -- was grounded more in prestige than in strategic value. Due to the high altitude (much of it over 4,850 meters) the area was home to just a handful of nomads. Moreover, land access was virtually impossible from the Indian side. The Chinese enjoyed easier access and had already constructed part of their important road link between Xinjiang and Lhasa across the disputed Ladakh zone. Slowly at first, the two sides had resorted to arms to press their conflicting claims. The first known PLA incursion took place in September 1958 when Chinese troops arrested an Indian police patrol in Ladakh (the police were attempting to reconnoiter the true alignment of the Xinjiang-Tibet road). The following year, after the exile of the Dalai Lama, the frontier heated up after the Indians sent soldiers directly up to the Himalayan watershed; previously, they had been bivouacked well behind that line. The Chinese, in return, sent parries to both NEFA and Ladakh, including an October 1959 attack in the west that killed nine Indians. Though the Indian military raised a cry at that time, Defense Minister Menon would hear none of it. Labeling the army chief a pro-Western alarmist, he preferred to focus attention on the threat posed by Pakistan. Intimidated by the brash defense chief, the generals took to quietly improving their readiness along the Tibet frontier. Following road and rail construction, an increase in air transport capabilities, and the deployment of more troops at key locations along the border, the top brass was increasingly confident of its ability to deal with Beijing. Reflecting this confidence, in the spring of 1962, India began deploying more patrols and establishing new forward posts in Ladakh -- behind Chinese positions, but still inside Indian-claimed territory. [16] By mid-1962, however, India's military leaders began wondering whether they were overextended. Their fears seemed justified when Dalvi's report about the Towang attack reached New Delhi. But to the shock and dismay of the field commanders in NEFA, Menon, preoccupied with preparations for the upcoming United Nations General Assembly session later in September, was keen to dismiss the incident as nothing more serious than the minor incursions of previous years. One month later, there could be no mistaking Chinese intent. On 20 October, PLA troops rolled down from the Himalayas and smashed Indian outposts across a wide front. Better acclimated to the altitude, properly stocked from nearby roads, and outnumbering the Indians eight to one, the PLA held every key advantage and showed it. "We were flabbergasted," said one National Security Council staffer, "when the Chinese wiped the floor with the Indians." [17] *** No two Indian officials felt the heat from the losses more than Defense Minister Menon and the chief of the General Staff, Lieutenant General B. M. Kaul. Both were inextricably linked: Menon had been instrumental in getting Kaul his senior post, catapulting him over better-qualified generals in the process. This was partly because Kaul was regarded as less pro-Western than many of his peers, lending him the same political mind-set as the defense minister. Menon was also well aware that Kaul shared Kashmiri roots with Nehru, who viewed the general as a protege and trusted confidant. Stung by the resultant whispers of nepotism, Kaul had tried to bolster his image by taking personal charge of a newly created corps set to expel the Chinese from NEFA. Not only had this fallen apart during the third week of October, but Kaul had earlier been stricken with a lung infection and sat out the bleakest days in bed in New Delhi. Humiliated and ill, the general sought out Menon to brainstorm ways of salvaging the desperate situation in the Himalayas -- and their careers. One solution, they felt, was to create a guerrilla force that could strike deep behind Chinese lines. Because the Chinese were coming from Tibet, members of that ethnic group were the logical guerrillas of choice. Finding volunteers would not be a problem; both knew that there was no shortage of Tibetans on Indian soil, and virtually all were vehemently anti-Chinese and would not hesitate to take up arms for their own patriotic reasons. But who would lead such a force? They needed a senior Indian officer who could win the confidence of the Tibetans, embracing their independent nature and promoting a semblance of discipline without resort to a rigid army code. And he would need to have a bent for the unconventional -- something that was in short supply in the Indian military, as the trench mentality in the Himalayas had dramatically proved. [18] As they scoured the roster of available officers, one name caught their eye. Brigadier Sujan Singh Uban, until recently the commander of the 26th Artillery Brigade in Kashmir, was in New Delhi after having just processed his retirement papers. Forty-eight years old, he had been an artilleryman all his career, first under the British colonial system and then with the Indian military after independence. Normally, this would have provided little room for innovation, but Uban had spent much time with mountain units and was familiar with fighting at high altitudes. And during a stint as an artillery instructor for jungle warfare units, he had earned the nickname "Mad Sikh" for his flair and drive. That small detail was enough for Menon and Kaul, who flashed an urgent message summoning the brigadier. On 26 October, Uban was sitting in the defense minister's office. The situation on the border -- and the status of Menon and Kaul -- had already reached a critical point. With the Chinese still inside Indian territory, Uban was given sketchy details of the proposed behind-the-lines guerrilla mission. Working with the Tibetans would not be easy, warned Kaul. Disciplining them, he said, would be like taming wild tigers. As a sweetener, the brigadier was promised a second star in due course. Uban was hooked; he grabbed the assignment without hesitation. [19] Now that the guerrilla force had a leader, there remained the job of signing on Tibetan volunteers. To help, the Indians sent an emissary from the Intelligence Bureau to Darjeeling to fetch the Dalai Lama's brother, Gyalo Thondup. After years of attempting to court the Indians -- who were often sympathetic but never committal -- Gyalo relished the moment as he sat in front of a select group of senior intelligence and military officials in the capital. Speaking in theoretical terms, his hosts asked whether he could organize the needed volunteers. Of course, replied Gyalo. When asked how many, he conjured a robust, round figure. Five thousand, he said. [20] Next came a key question. Would Gyalo prefer that the Intelligence Bureau or the Ministry of Defense be involved? Based on his earlier contact with Mullik and his current cooperation with the CIA (through Lhamo Tsering), the decision was easy. "Not Defense," was his indirect answer. [21] *** Despite India's woes -- and its newfound interest in the Tibetans -- most of Washington took little notice. Half a world away in the waters around Cuba, nuclear brinkmanship was being taken to the limit as President Kennedy demanded a withdrawal of Soviet missiles from that island. Not until 28 October did the world breathe a sigh of relief when Moscow agreed to withdraw its weaponry. With that crisis over, the Sino-Indian conflict belatedly leapfrogged to the top of Washington's foreign policy agenda. The very next day, Prime Minister Nehru made an unequivocal request for U.S. military assistance. For the tired, beaten leader, it was a humbling overture. It was an admission not only that his central belief in peaceful coexistence with the PRC was irrevocably shattered but also that his cordial relationship with the Soviet Union had proved hollow. Due to the Cuban missile crisis, the Soviets had been forced to side with China vis-a-vis India so as not to alienate a needed communist ally in their moment of danger. Not only did Moscow backpedal on its earlier promise to sell MiG-21 jets to India, but on 29 October it openly declared that it would recognize Chinese territorial claims and extend no arms at all to India. [22] Immediately, Washington stepped into the fray and responded generously to Nehru's appeal for assistance. By 2 November, the USAF was using Europe-based Boeing 707 transports to fly eight missions into India every day for a week. Each plane was packed with basic infantry equipment to refit the soldiers streaming off the Himalayas, who in most cases were outfitted with more primitive gear than had been afforded the CIA's Tibetan guerrillas. These supplies were later ferried by USAF C-130 transports to smaller airfields near the frontier battle lines. [23] Still, the aid did not turn the tide. On 14 November, an Indian counterattack in NEFA was soundly routed. Three days later, the entire NEFA line collapsed, giving China virtual control over 64,000 square kilometers of territory. By 19 November, leaders in New Delhi genuinely feared an attack on Calcutta, prompting Nehru to take the extraordinary step of sending two secret back-channel messages to Kennedy pleading for a pair of bomber squadrons flown by U.S. pilots. India's infantrymen and Nehru's pride were not the only casualties of the conflict. Back on 28 October, America's bete noire, the discredited Krishna Menon, had tendered his resignation. With him out of the way and the situation on the frontier critical, Kennedy gathered some of his best and brightest on 19 November to discuss the war in the Himalayas. Among those present were secretary of Defense McNamara, Secretary of State Dean Rusk, and Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs Averell Harriman. At seventy-two, Harriman was one of America's most respected diplomats and politicians. The former governor had worked closely with the Indians in the past, having appealed to Nehru the previous year to assist in formulating a negotiated end to the looming superpower rivalry in Laos. Significantly, too, throughout the summer of 1962, Harriman had been a lone senior voice in the State Department supporting the CIA's argument for ongoing paramilitary operations out of Mustang. Discussed at the 19 November meeting was increased U.S. military assistance to India and options for a show of force in the region. Also mentioned was the possibility of using the CIA's Tibetan guerrillas. John McCone, a wealthy and opinionated Republican chosen by Kennedy to replace CIA Director Dulles after the Bay of Pigs, was on hand to brief the president on such covert matters. Joining McCone was Des FitzGerald, the Far East chief; James Critchfield, head of the Near East Division, was touring Beirut at the time. [24] By meeting's end, it was decided that Harriman would lead a high-powered delegation to New Delhi to more fully assess India's needs. General Paul Adams, chief of the U.S. Strike Command, was to head the military component. From the CIA, Des FitzGerald won a seat on the mission, as did the head of the Tibet Task Force, Ken Knaus. Rendezvousing with them in India would be Critchfield, who received an emergency cable to depart Lebanon immediately for the subcontinent. On 21 November, Harriman's entourage departed Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland. Although the Chinese declared a unilateral cease-fire while the group was en route, the situation was still tense when it reached New Delhi the following day. Without pause, Ambassador Galbraith ushered Harriman into the first of four meetings with Nehru. The end results of these discussions were plans for a major three-phase military aid package encompassing material support, help with domestic defense production, and possible assistance with air defenses. As a covert aside to Harriman's talks, the CIA representatives on the delegation held their own sessions with Indian intelligence czar Mullik. This was a first, as Galbraith had previously taken great pains to downscale the agency's activities inside India to all but benign reporting functions. As recently as 5 November, he had objected to projected CIA plans due to the risk of exposure. But in a 13 November letter to Kennedy, the ambassador had a qualified change of heart, noting that Menon's departure was a turning point to begin working with the Indians on "sensitive matters." [25] Both the CIA and the Intelligence Bureau were quick to seize the opportunity. "I went into a huddle with Mullik and Des," recalls Critchfield, "and we started coming up with all these schemes against the Chinese." Most of their ideas centered around use of the Tibetans. "The Indians were interested in the Tibet program because of its intelligence collection value," said station chief David Blee, who sat in on some of the meetings. "Mullik was particularly interested in paramilitary operations." [26] There was good reason for this: following Menon's resignation, and Gyalo Thondup's stated preference, the Intelligence Bureau had been placed in charge of the 5,000 Tibetan guerrillas forming under Brigadier Uban. Mullik was cautious as well. Although he was well connected to the Nehru family and had the prime minister's full approval to talk with the CIA, he knew that the Indian populace was fickle, and until recently, anti-Americanism had been a popular mantra. It was perhaps only a matter of time before the barometer would swing back and make open Indo-U.S. cooperation political suicide. To offer some protection against this, Mullik and one of his close deputies, M. I. Hooja, made a special request during a session with FitzGerald and Blee. "They made us promise that our involvement," said Blee, "would remain secret forever." [27] By the end of the Harriman mission, the CIA and Intelligence Bureau had arrived at a rough division of labor. The Indians, with CIA support from the Near East Division, would work together in developing Uban's 5,000-strong tactical guerrilla force. The CIA's Far East Division, meantime, would unilaterally create a strategic long-range resistance movement inside Tibet. The Mustang contingent would also remain under the CIA's unilateral control. All this would depend on final approval by the highest levels of the Kennedy administration. Meanwhile, the CIA arranged for a sign of good faith. A single crew was selected from the agency's air proprietaries in Taiwan and Japan, then dispatched to Takhli aboard a DC-6 transport. Loaded with an assortment of military aid, the plane made three shuttles between Thailand and the Charbatia airfield near the city of Bhubaneswar in India's eastern state of Orissa. A relic of World War II, Charbatia had fallen into a severe state of disrepair. More remarkable than its poor condition were the precautions taken to keep the CIA's largesse a secret from the die-hard Soviet supporters among New Delhi's political elite. "We flew the last few miles just fifty feet above the ground to avoid radar," said pilot Neese Hicks. "We would land at dawn, eat a fast breakfast, and be back in the air toward Takhli." [28] By the last week of November, the CIA representatives from the Harriman delegation were back in Washington and making their pitch before the Special Group. Though they could now count on Indian participation -- which had been a prerequisite for future support to the Mustang group -- they had a tough sell. CIA Director McCone, for one, was a pronounced skeptic with relatively little interest in covert paramilitary operations. Citing the example of Mustang (which had done precious little over the past year), he was dubious about the utility of developing a tactical guerrilla force that the United States could not ultimately control. And although officials in New Delhi believed that limited war with China might continue intermittently over a number of years, he questioned what would happen in the event of Sino-Indian rapprochement. Would the CIA have to cut its support to the guerrillas and the resistance in midstream? [29] There was also sharp criticism from the Pentagon, but for a different reason. General Maxwell Taylor, the president's military adviser who had recently taken over as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, tore into Critchfield for not informing the Department of Defense about the ongoing paramilitary program at Mustang. Many upcoming contingencies might hinge on the Mustang guerrillas, chided Taylor, and the Pentagon's representatives on the Harriman mission had only belatedly found out about Mustang's existence while in India. Many suspected that Taylor's umbrage was because he had lobbied hard over the past year to have CIA paramilitary operations revert to Defense Department control, and he was livid at finding a holdout. Despite the comments from the likes of McCone and Taylor, the chance of making significant inroads with the Indians -- and giving a bigger headache to Beijing -- was too good to pass up. On 13 December, the Kennedy administration approved training assistance to Uban's tactical guerrilla force. At the same time, the Tibet Task Force drew up plans to reopen Hale and school at least 125 candidates for the long-range resistance movement. Commented task force chief Knaus, "We had suddenly gone from stepchild to favored son." [30]
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