The Korean War: The Untold Truth

Chapter 91
The CIA borrowed underwater explosives specialists from the Navy to train for real missions.The small landing craft were parked beyond the skyline while the infiltration and sabotage teams inflated the dinghies and rowed to the beach. "I want the North Koreans to know that we, the Americans, built this guerrilla. It will make the North Koreans respect us, and it will make the U.S. military respect us."

Toft's empire expanded rapidly.A few years earlier, the CIA had taken over General Chennault's WWII "Flying Tigers," an American mercenary and regular army that fought the Communists for Chiang Kai-shek.The CIA transferred it to Taiwan and renamed it "Civil Air Transport Team".Now, 40 aircraft bearing the Chinese Nationalist flag and the "Civil Air Transport Team" symbol have been transferred to Japan and North Korea for Toft's use, and their pilots and ground crews are paid by the CIA.Toft ordered a comfortably equipped C-47 (model number XT-854) as a private jet to fly between six CIA training stations in Japan and several other stations in North Korea.He also took over a house on Yeongdo overlooking the Port of Busan, which is the commanding height of the area.He uses the place to escape the hustle and bustle and hold planning meetings. "It's one of the best views in Asia, and getting away from the hustle and bustle of Tokyo allows us to work faster and better."

Toft was tasked with covert operations across a large swath of Asia outside of Korea: East Siberia as far as Lake Baikal, all of Mongolia and North China including Manchuria, and the Kuril Islands and Ryukyu Islands, the former under Soviet control.A particularly delicate target was the Soviet naval base in Vladivostok (Vladivostok), Siberia.The Soviet Union used a large number of Koreans and Chinese as temporary workers in the base, so that the infiltration of CIA personnel was relatively easy. From late 1950 onwards, at least half a dozen CIA spies worked there, monitoring Soviet naval movements and alerting them to any possible signs of Russian meddling in the war.

However, the base was so heavily fortified that Toft's spies were afraid to communicate by radio. "We rely on 'carrier pigeons'—other North Korean spies—to pass messages back and forth. It's utterly dangerous work, but it's necessary."

Special agent teams infiltrated "Manchuria" and Eastern Siberia by air and sea, and other specially trained teams based in the Atsugi CIA entered the Shandong Peninsula and North China's Tianjin area.For political reasons, it is not allowed to use the aircraft of the "civil air transport team" to send espionage personnel into China and the Soviet Union to carry out missions. "We can't fly into these countries with planes bearing the Chinese Nationalist flag, so we rely on the U.S. Far East Air Force," Toft said.General Earl Partridge, deputy commander of the Far East Air Force, was so grateful to the CIA for the rescue of his downed airman that he immediately agreed to provide aircraft and pilots to carry out these dangerous missions behind enemy lines.But MacArthur had long felt that Tofte's actions were too large, too independent, and too dangerous. On October 1950, 10, MacArthur called the Joint Chiefs of Staff to say that Toft's "Policy Coordination Bureau" was "acting in accordance with the relevant special agreements, but it has violated these agreements from time to time."He reported a recent incident in which a spy was dropped from a plane of the Far Eastern Air Force into Soviet territory as a sign of "serious matters".Therefore, he suggested to the Joint Chiefs of Staff that he intended to suspend the program.He has "ordered his departments not to engage in similar projects without his special permission".

Two days later, the Joint Chiefs of Staff replied that "no responsible official in Washington has questioned [MacArthur's] command over CIA operations in his theater or planned area of ​​operations." However, the Joint Chiefs of Staff "hope he will support CIA Bureau-approved intelligence and clandestine activities to reflect the responsibility of the Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. Forces in the Far East.”

As the weeks passed, Toft's force numbered more than 1 at Atsugi Air Force Base alone, where they lived in a secure compound. Air Transport Corps aircraft provide the CIA with mobility independent of the military. "In Japan or North Korea, we never take orders from the military," Tofte said. "We write our own orders and make it look like an official document without which no one can act freely. We ignore it." The ban on sending local personnel into and out of Japan, both in war zones and throughout occupied Japan, we send thousands of guerrillas and spies into and out of our training and staging camps."

These clandestine operations did not entirely escape Willoughby's attention, and the CIA operatives soon found themselves under the watchful eye of Japanese police working for the military's counterintelligence unit.Toft was so enraged that he even thought seriously about "drowning" a particularly annoying official working for Willoughby.In moments of frustration, Tofte would say that MacArthur had three enemies: the Russians, the Chinese, and the North Koreans. "And I have four enemies," he said, "those three, plus MacArthur."

Occasionally, some eccentric figures sent by Washington will also break into Toft's territory.A Cherokee Indian code-named "Buffalo" was asked in Washington, "Would you like to kill (North Korean Prime Minister) Kim Il Sung?" "I'll do it today," he is said to have replied, and set off to the Far East. "Buffalo" was so suspicious of everything that he didn't want to go near any ordinary CIA office, even one that was deeply hidden.He insisted on meeting Toft and other officials "near the palace walls, at sunset". If Buffalo's assassination was successful, he would receive what Toft called "a substantial sum of money."But apparently nothing happened, and the CIA has never known what the "Buffalo" did after he left Tokyo.

In terms of psychological warfare, Toft not only managed to damage the Soviet Union's reputation in Japan, but in the process earned the CIA $10.4.Soviet policy at the time was to encourage Japanese leftists to resist MacArthur's democratization process and to make the Japanese people suspicious of forging too close an alliance with the United States.It implied that Japan, a bystander, would be destroyed in an American-Soviet war.

At the end of 1950, the opportunity came for Toft to make a bad move in publicity.That's when the Soviets began releasing hundreds of Japanese soldiers who had "disappeared" in Siberia after the end of World War II."The leftist press in Japan has soft feelings for the Soviet Union, saying how well-meaning the Soviet Union was going to release these people," Toft said. He felt there were other intentions here.The U.S. military presence in Japan is nothing more than a gendarmerie battalion except for the personnel of the headquarters.Toft worried that the release of prisoners of war and rising pro-Soviet sentiment might bring propaganda benefits to the Russians.He discussed counterattacks with his deputy, Colwell Beers, but could come up with no good ideas.

Inadvertently, Willoughby gave them a head start.One of his men was given a diary kept by a Japanese colonel who had spent the postwar years in a Siberian labor camp, a horrific experience. "Willoughby didn't know what the diary was going to do, so he sent it to the CIA as a joke," Toft said.Toft glanced over the translation of the diary, and Biers announced, "We're going into the film business. We're going to make a film about what it's like to be a prisoner of war in Russia."

At Tofter's urging, MacArthur lifted a ban that had prevented the Japanese film industry from making a postwar comeback.A request was submitted to the CIA for a director and script writer for the film.The crew mostly worked with Japanese film technicians—but under the direction of the CIA, a mock Russian prisoner-of-war camp was built on the snowy plains of Hokkaido, Japan's northernmost island.Toft ordered various items, and four wagons of ketchup, and Bills asked him why. "Because it's going to be the bloodiest movie ever made," Toft replied.

(End of this chapter)