Re: Update from Korea Visit

[Mike Davino <mdavino@yahoo.com>]

Here is an article from the Pacific Stars and Stripes
about the trip made by Mike Hass to Korea:

Pacific Stars and Stripes
Sunday, August 6, 2000
 
Historian: Korean War spying
was only marginally effective
By Jim Lea
Osan bureau chief

OSAN AIR BASE, South Korea — U.S.-led spy activities
during the Korean War were heroic, creative and only
marginally effective, a military historian told airman
here.

Retired U.S. Air Force Col. Michael E. Haas, a former
special operations expert, called those
intelligence-gathering operations "disturbing in the
number of lives that were squandered."

Haas’ military career covered service in the Army and
Air Force. He served in Special Forces and Army Ranger
units. He wore the Army’s Expert Infantryman Badge,
and carried Air Force command pilot, master
parachutist and military free-fall certifications and
Navy scuba ratings.

He also has authored two books on special operations,
Apollo’s Warriors, and the just-published In the
Devil’s Shadow, about special operations in the Korean
War.

In his lectures at Osan last week, he said a major
turf battle between the Army and the CIA limited the
effectiveness of the spy operations.

"General Douglas MacArthur was staunchly opposed to
having any unconventional warfare force operating in
his theater of operations," Haas said. "That
prohibition had been strongly enforced in the Pacific
in World War II and continued in effect for five years
up to the start of the Korean War."

However, a few weeks before the war began, the CIA
arrived in Japan: a move MacArthur met with "outright
hostility," Haas said. The general pointed out that he
already had a Korean intelligence-gathering group
under his command.

But Pentagon policy at the time called for unified
commands to establish joint staff offices — including
intelligence — composed of Army, Navy and Air Force
officers.

"When he was forced to accept the CIA’s presence, he
did so with a tactic that was vintage MacArthur," Haas
said. "He ignored it."

The squabbling caused the unconventional warfare
effort to be marginally effective, Haas said.

That effort relied heavily on inserting Korean agents
into North Korea by night-parachute drops in a program
called Operation Aviary. For many of those agents —
called "rabbits" — their actual mission drop was the
first, and generally last, parachute jump they ever
made, Haas said.

Operation Aviary was infiltrated by communist agents,
and "rabbits would be dropped into the North and
almost immediately killed because the North Koreans
and Chinese knew they were coming," Haas said.

"In one incident in February 1952, a C-46 transport
left Seoul City Airport on a night mission to
infiltrate Chinese agents into an area near the Yalu
River (the border between Korea and China)," he said.
"When they reached the drop zone, the first agent
jumped, but the second hesitated long enough to throw
a live grenade into the forward compartment, killing
four other Chinese agents and an American agent
handler."

Some rabbits were able to return to the South —
walking through tortuous terrain and spending time
avoiding capture — he said, but the trip took so long
that the information they brought with them was so
outdated, it was useless. 

Following the Inchon Landing and the Pusan Breakout,
which chased the North Korean invaders back across the
38th parallel, communist troop concentrations in the
North rendered Operation Aviary ineffective, he said.

"Missions that had been thought of as ‘high risk’
began being thought of as suicidal," Haas said. "But
even when the return rate (to the South) of Korean
agents fell to zero, they kept sending those agents."

Spying in North Korea was equal opportunity
employment, Haas said. Officials recruited South
Korean film and stage actresses to become spies, Haas
said.

"They were parachuted at night into the North in
temperatures 40 to 50 degrees below zero," he said. On
the ground, they were to find and seduce the
highest-ranking North Korean or Chinese officer they
could find, sleep with him long enough to obtain
valuable intelligence data, then take that back to the
South.

"At least one of them was successful," he said. "The
Chinese army (that had by then entered Korea) suddenly
disappeared. Nobody could find them. Then this female
agent who had been sleeping with a Chinese lieutenant
colonel came out with their whole order of battle. The
Chinese divisions had side-slipped and were poised to
attack the 2nd Infantry Division.

"With the information the female agent brought out,
U.S. Marines moved up and handed the Chinese a
resounding defeat."

One of the most effective U.S. unconventional warfare
practitioners during the Korean War was U.S. Air Force
Master Sgt. Donald Nichols, a former motor-pool
sergeant, who arrived in South Korea in 1946. By the
time the war started, Nichols had established a
network of more than 900 spies working in the North.

"He provided a ‘one-stop’ intelligence service,
including human intelligence (spies) and Ranger
assaults on high-priority targets," Haas said.

One of those assaults earned him the Distinguished
Service Cross after he and five Korean agents flew
some 100 miles into North Korea in an unarmed
helicopter to photograph the wreckage of a MiG-15 jet.

Nichols also once "borrowed a tank retriever from a
front line unit and, under intense enemy fire, brought
back an abandoned Soviet-built T-34 tank. For that, he
received the Silver Star," Haas said.

He frequently warned the U.S. command in the months
immediately before the North Korean invasion that "an
attack was imminent," Haas said. "But he was ignored."

Nichols’ unit eventually became official, being
designated the 6004th Air Intelligence Service
Squadron. By the end of the war, Nichols was a major.

But by the time he died in 1992, Nichols had become
increasingly depressed over the number of deaths in
the unconventional warfare effort.

"He often said his superiors didn’t care, didn’t want
to know how he accomplished the orders they gave him,"
Haas said. "He spent many dark, lonely nights
wrestling with the fact that he was the one who had to
order men to carry out missions he knew they would not
return from."
  
 

  
 

 

--- DasHaas@aol.com wrote:
> 5 August
> 
>     Listers!
> 
>     I've just returned from a week or so visit to
> Yongsan Garrison, the DMZ, 
> Panmunjom, and Osan AB.  Thought I'd take a moment
> to update you on a few 
> things that may be of interest.
> 
>     - The USFK History Office at Yongsan Garrison
> has recently gone through 
> some major upgrades thanks to the arrival a few
> months ago of an energetic 
> army major, one "Chip" Knighten.  It's now called
> the Heritage Center, and 
> though it's still small,  it's set up to receive
> vet-visitors.  They've 
> nearly completed a MOH room showing the photo and
> related info on all but one 
> of the MOH recipients of the war.  Best of all,
> they've got a great attitude 
> toward vets, so if you're off to Seoul, make a point
> of dropping by.
> 
>     - Personnel turbulence due to the short
> tour-lengths is still causing 
> considerable problems to the combat readiness of the
> forces there.  I was 
> told that there was something like a 125% turnover
> throughout the last year.  
> Don't know how you go over 100%, but you get the
> picture.
> 
>     - Have also learned that in the eyes of many,
> the 2d Inf Div's six 
> battalions are so spread out and poorly placed in
> the hills and narrow 
> valleys north of Seoul, that the Div stands little
> chance of giving a good 
> account of itself, or even defending itself, should
> the NKs come across the 
> DMZ.  This dangerous state of affairs apparently
> appears acceptable to US and 
> SK politicians because the destruction of the 2ID
> will be used as a political 
> rallying cry to get the U.S. involved in a future
> war.  I.e., the combat 
> performance of the division itself is a secondary
> issue.  With this 
> rationale, training areas and firing ranges have
> been severely reduced in 
> size and number.
> 
>     - During my first and only visit to Panmunjom, I
> discovered that it's a 
> must stop for any vet or major pol-mil figures going
> to Korea.  The tension 
> and hatred between NK and SK guards is palpable. 
> There's been more violence 
> there than has generally made the papers (e.g., in
> 1984 a NK "photographer" 
> (subsequently confirmed to be a NKPA officer) kicked
> a U.S. Army major in the 
> throat, causing serious injury).  No NK guards got
> close to me, content to 
> look at me through binocs.  But it's still a good
> place to be paranoid.
> 
>     A real eye opener if you haven't seen it before.
>  The area around 
> Panmunjom is the only area in which U.S. army
> patrols are still conducted (to 
> check for line-crossers coming south).  Note: The
> 2ID has no "eyes on target" 
> in the DMZ, a change made a number of years ago. 
> The SK Army took it's place 
> with the promise that it would feed it's Current
> Intell to the 2ID, but that 
> never happened.
> 
>     - There's a nice monument to Task Force Smith in
> Suwon; worth a stop if 
> you're going through the area.
> 
>     - Finally, if your a retired vet, the DragonHill
> Lodge at Yongsan 
> Garrison is nicely done, with several restaurants
> and shops inside.  Nice 
> place to stay after the 12-hour-long flight from the
> west coast.
> 
>     Hope I haven't abused my List privileges in
> putting out this current 
> note.  Thanks!
> 
> Mike


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