The Korean War: The Untold Truth

Chapter 90
Toft's experience in Asia began in the early 20s. When he was 30 years old, a Danish shipping company "East Asia Company" sent the Danish captain's son to Beijing to learn Chinese as the first step in cultivating his overseas experience. step. The "East Asia Company" is like a replica of the "East India Company" that the British had long served as their colonial agent in India. It has offices in China's coastal areas from south to north. "When you go overseas to work for a company," Toft narrates, "you know it will be about 19 years, and you are not allowed to marry for the first 25 years." After studying Chinese in Beijing for two years, Toft , lived in Jilin for 10 years, representing his company in Jilin and the northern half of North Korea.He was very close to the White Russian nobles who lived in the area, fleeing the communist revolution, and he gradually knew almost every bend and intersection of railways and roads here. (Toft, later, as a CIA officer, was able to map the movements of Chinese troops with uncanny prowess along the railroad lines he had traveled in his youth, and to pinpoint the The location of bridges and other critical areas. Transportation in these locations is particularly vulnerable to saboteur bombs.)
After the outbreak of World War II, Toft returned to Denmark and joined the underground resistance movement.But he acknowledged the reality that the Nazis could not be defeated from within an occupied country.Using false papers, he managed to escape to Spain (taking a horrifying flight on a German plane) and from there to the United States.In New York he found William Stephenson, the man in charge of British intelligence in the United States and later known as the "Dauntless Warrior."Toft served wholeheartedly, and Stephenson sent him to Singapore, where he organized local people to provide supplies to the inland Chinese resisting Japan through the Burma Road.He organized tribal guerrillas in a valiant but ultimately futile effort to contain the Japanese.After the fall of Singapore, Toft returned to the United States, where he renounced his rank as a major in the Indian Army and enlisted as a private in the U.S. Army.

Because of Tofte's background, his details were passed to OSS, the wartime intelligence and espionage agency that eventually became the CIA.Tofte begins one of the most dizzying strings of feats in World War II.

While working with the OSS chief, Major General William "Wild Bill" Donovan, Tofte helped hatch a plan to force the Germans to move their strategic forces from the Italian campaign to Yugoslavia.The British had been airdropping weapons, ammunition and other supplies to the Yugoslav patriots who were fighting the Sparrow War against the Germans in the mountain fortresses.The irascible Toft thought the approach was too slow and had too limited impact.Based on the experience of his sea career, he organized an offshore fleet composed of old and abandoned ships, equipped with exiles from Yugoslavia, and established a sea supply transportation line from the port of Bari, Italy, across the Adriatic Sea , all the way to Vis Island off the Yugoslav coastline.

By October 1943, Toft's quaint little navy consisted of 10 vessels, including antiquated schooners, fishing trawlers and rusty steam cargo ships.The ships scrambled across the sea at night, each carrying a month's worth of war supplies equivalent to Britain's airdrops.Joseph Broz Tito (later president of Yugoslavia) gratefully received the weapons, and his partisans pinned down tens of thousands of German troops.The United States awarded Tofte the Legion of Honor.

After the war, Toft was invited to remain in the U.S. intelligence community.OSS had been disbanded a few months after the war, but veterans of the intelligence community knew that a corresponding agency would eventually replace it.Unwilling to spend his life in a paramilitary organization, Toft declined the offer and returned to Copenhagen to work as a manager for an American overseas airline.He still kept in touch with the head of the Danish Intelligence Service, and occasionally brought some secret documents to the United States. In the late 40s, he married an American woman and moved to Mason City, Iowa, to run her family's printing business.

At this point, the CIA already existed, a tiny, insignificant agency distrusted by bureaucrats in the military and the State Department, but people inside the agency were ambitious. On Christmas 1949, Tofte visited Washington with two of his wartime friends, Desmond Fitzgerald, the CIA's deputy director for planning (i.e., covert operations), and the head of Far East Operations. Major General Richard Stilwell--hungry for talent, eager to invite him to join the CIA.At a lunch at the Salgrave Club, Toft politely but firmly declined to join the CIA.He lived a comfortable middle-class American life in Iowa—the Rotary International local chapter, the Episcopal Church, a Boy Scout magistrate, and Toft didn't want to be part of the peacetime bureaucracy.But he agreed to a meeting with Frank Wisner, another wartime colleague who was now secretly working for the CIA.The environment of the conversation reflected the CIA's isolated and helpless position: a group of rickety wooden "temporary" structures near the Washington Reflecting Pool.

"We definitely need you," Wiesner said.

Toft again refused. "But if there's still a war, you can come to me," he said.

In June 1950, Tofte traveled to Fort Riley, Kansas, for two weeks of active duty training as a lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserve.On Sunday morning he heard the news of the war, and he thought, "Here comes the war, my Jesus, and I'm at Fort Riley in uniform!" The next morning there came the awaited call from Wiesner's side. "Is this emergency enough for you?" Wiesner asked coldly."Yes," said Toft. "Can you come here right away?"

By Tuesday, Tofte was at CIA headquarters in Washington.He realized that due to his background in the East and his language skills (he could speak six languages), it was logical to send him to North Korea.Stilwell and Wiesner arranged a briefing, but they gave Toft no orders either. "There's no rules," he said. "This is the first time the CIA is operating in a hot war."

As a general guideline, Toft was told to heed the role of the CIA as articulated in Part V of NSC Directive 10/2, which outlines the spy agency's mission: covert political operations, Covert psychological warfare, covert auxiliary military operations, covert sabotage, and economic warfare, as well as dodge and escape plans for pilots shot down behind enemy lines, and the organization of secret agents "in the rear" should the communists reach Japan or North Korea ,etc.

"In general, they asked me to pick a location and set up an operating base outside of Tokyo. The base would have room for 1 people, with our own communications equipment. No matter what happened, I would be on my own."

Toft called his wife in Mason City and asked her to meet him on his first stop in Minneapolis from Tokyo.She brought him two boxes of clothes. "I never went home at all."

There was only one thing Toft insisted on with the CIA before accepting the North Korea trip.He had heard more or less about the working methods in MacArthur's headquarters and the extremely demanding character of Major General Charles Willoughby.Tofte had to work closely with Willoughby, who was in the theater's intelligence service.Therefore, Toft refused to continue to use the rank of reserve lieutenant colonel, and asked to go to Tokyo with the rank of major general in the Intelligence Bureau, so as to be on an equal footing with Willoughby.The CIA agreed.

Toft was right about his foresight.The CIA's foothold in the MacArthur district was shaky.It was only in May of that year that General Stilwell obtained permission from MacArthur to allow the CIA to operate in his Asian region.MacArthur's distaste for covert intelligence activities independent of his control dates back to World War II, when he flatly denied OSS agents operating in the Pacific theater.A traditionalist in the military, he scoffed at the free-spirited ethos of Secret Service agents working independently of his headquarters, but the pressure from Washington forced him to agree, rather reluctantly, in the weeks before the war broke out. Stilwell struck a deal.

Upon his arrival in Tokyo, Toft found that the CIA's presence there was nothing more than "six poor despondents" working out of a hotel room.The group, led by Georges Oriel, maintained a difficult relationship with what Toft called MacArthur's headquarters, "an impenetrable, impenetrable independent kingdom."At the Yokosuka Naval Base near the port of Yokohama, the CIA's work is a little more practical.William Duggan conducted his intelligence activities under the auspices of a branch of the CIA with a nonsensical name called Special Operations.Toft set about organizing his own covert operations unit, called the Policy Coordination Bureau.

First, however, he must bring the rebellious Willoughby into line with him.Tofte, self-important and sharp-edged, first clashed with Willoughby over his insistence on a suite at the Imperial Hotel in downtown Tokyo.Willoughby said angrily, no, the Imperial Hotel can only be arranged for generals, admirals and other "specially important senior officers".Toft showed his "rank" of major general and was given the suite.He also asked the military to provide a two-star flag for his car.When there was no ready-made flag, he ordered one himself.

"I saw that the most effective way to deal with Willoughby was to kick his ass at every opportunity to show him that I was as tough as he was, if not tougher than him," Tofte recounted.So when Willoughby made his "monthly threat" to kick Toft and the CIA out of Japan, Toft told Willoughby: "Shut up, you work for me. I'm an American citizen." And taxpayers, you can't dictate to me."

Willoughby and Tofte, however, were equally gifted with foreign languages, and this gradually eased their mutual animosity "though it did not cease altogether."Toft said: "One day I talked to him on the phone in Russian, and the next day we spoke Chinese. It was like a sport. He laughed sometimes, but I was blunt to him: 'I will never Speak your goddamn German to you.'" He clearly recalled his days in the Norwegian underground.

Tofte benefited from his deputy in Tokyo as an experienced official.Colwell Beals had earlier served on the U.S. Forest Service and the Hoover Commission, a postwar agency responsible for government effectiveness. "Bills was a really good officer," Toft said. "He saved me from going to jail because he knew his way around the government and knew how to deal with the paperwork and the details. We made a great team." .”

Toft and Bills spent their first week driving around Tokyo, looking for a place for the CIA's new base here. “We don’t all work. We pack our lunches and we swim at Imperial Beach.” That day, the pair ate lunch while walking around Atsugi Air Force Base, 47 miles south of Tokyo, overlooking majestic Mount Fuji.They came to a remote place of about 50 hectares. "With a beer in one hand and a chicken sandwich in the other, I yelled, 'Here's our future base.'" Toft and Bills ate and drank as they measured which buildings would be built. Where should it be covered.Within this week, engineering crews and a construction battalion were up and running.

Next, Toft needs to recruit.He recruited men from the army, the only place that could provide ready manpower.He realized that the upper-level officers did not have a good impression of the CIA, so he looked for candidates among the second- and third-rate officers in the staff department. "One of my responsibilities was to set up a 'hide and run' operation all over North Korea to recover downed pilots. So obviously, that has a lot of appeal to the Air Force and Navy because they want their pilots Get security. That way I can convince the services, and the Army, to send me guys."

Toft drew two officers each from the Navy, Army, and Air Force, locked them in his conference room in Tokyo, and ordered them to formulate a "dodge and escape" plan: "If a pilot is in the 'near the Yalu River' MiG corridor' was hit, and he had 20 minutes to fly before he fell. Had he known which direction he had to fly, the outcome would have been different." meet these requirements:

——Take the two islands north of the [-]th parallel and outside the east and west coastlines of North Korea as the main destinations for the "dodge and escape" of the downed pilots. The islands are equipped with CIA personnel and communication personnel.

—A "strip" across the peninsula, guided by trained guerrillas operating from fixed positions inland, was conveyed as part of the pilots' pre-battle briefings.

-Each 20 miles south of the "MiG Corridor", along the east and west coasts, set up secret agents and "hidden and escape" observation stations, equipped with communication equipment.

-- two local "fishing fleets" controlled by the CIA, patrolling the coast looking for downed pilots, using true black market operations as cover.

——Before the pilots set out to perform the mission, the CIA personnel briefed them on the technical details of the "dodge and escape" plan, and after the execution of the plan, asked the rescued pilots about the implementation details.

—Offers $70 worth of one-ounce gold bars stamped by the time-honored "Bank of China."In this way, each pilot can carry 3 to 4 of these gold bars in his uniform to pay the local North Koreans for help.Tofte knew the bars could be obtained from Taiwan.

After some revisions and discussions, the Air Force and Army accepted Toft's plan.The only objection came from Willoughby, who said that due to currency restrictions, gold from Taiwan could not be brought into Japan.Toft had no intention of arguing, so he flew to Taiwan that night, made a private transaction with the "Bank of China" in exile there, and returned to Japan with gold bars worth 70 US dollars.Within a month, the Hide and Escape program was partially operational.

The next step is to form guerrilla groups, both for "dodge and flight" missions and for sabotage and paramilitary operations.CIA interrogators screened North Koreans in refugee and prisoner-of-war camps near Busan, paying particular attention to North Korean refugees and their motivations for leaving the country, picking out those willing to "liberate" North Korea from the Communists People join guerrillas.Tofte realized that motivation might have nothing to do with ideology. "These refugees are poor and have nothing to do. Joining the guerrillas gives them the opportunity to find a way out, gives them three meals a day, and something to do. They can be brothers for a purpose, rather than idle around in a refugee camp." Pass Screening , the CIA found enough trained radio and telegraph operators, mainly from South Korean telegraph companies, to form guerrilla communications teams.

Toft took over Yongdo, a small island in Busan Bay at the southern tip of North Korea, as a training base.A CIA detachment headed by Marine Corps officer Lieutenant Colonel "Dutch" Kramer, where nearly 1 North Korean guerrillas were trained, was sent to operate north.Some with leadership qualities were selected for intensive training at the Chigasaki base on the beach of Sagami Bay, 200 miles from Atsugi, Japan.

Training activities continued throughout the fall of 1950 and the early months of 1951, during which a number of agents were periodically drawn north for "hide and escape" missions.The training followed the same basic guerrilla lessons that Toft taught other Asians in the early months of World War II: weapons use, boat smuggling, sabotage techniques, clandestine communications, espionage, and years of use by agents behind enemy lines other vocational skills.

(End of this chapter)