Free A Brief History of the Spy by Paul Simpson

open warnings from the Chinese authorities. The authorities in Beijing made it clear that they would take action as they saw fit to protect their country as GeneralMacArthur and his troops pushed the DPRK Army back towards the 38th Parallel and then across it, entering North Korean territory on 1 October. ‘While full-scale Chinese Communist intervention in Korea must be regarded as a continuing possibility, a consideration of all known factors leads to the conclusion that barring a Soviet decision for global war, such action is not probable in 1950,’ stated the CIA report on 12 October. The next day, the Communist Chinese army entered North Korea. By mid-November, they were in full operation.
    In light of these errors – and even before the Chinese intervention in the Korean War was confirmed – in October 1950, President Truman appointed General Walter Bedell Smith to the post of DCI with instructions to shake up the three-year-old agency and make it fit for purpose.
    Smith created three directorates – intelligence (CDI); plans (DP); and administration (DA) – and the Korean War became a baptism of fire for the newly reorganized CIA. Turf wars between them and the Army’s intelligence units continued, reaching as high as the President, who backed the CIA, although he required them to liaise with the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The Agency carried out a number of successful operations. Both they and the Army created units for special ops, and the CIA trained thousands of Koreans for infiltration into the DPRK for intelligence gathering and sabotage, as well as setting up escape and evasion networks. Missions, such as Operation Bluebell, were run by an operational arm known by the acronym JACK (Joint Advisory Commission, Korea), and, while the Agency acknowledged that some of the North Koreans and Chinese who volunteered for service were simply using them as a way of getting transport back home, many provided intelligence which helped the war effort.
    In addition, the CIA also tried to continue its mission of subverting Communism by carrying out missions in China. The Agency created a cover airline, Civil Air Transport Co.Ltd (CAT), which was used to drop agents and supplies into China, not always successfully. America still officially backed the nationalist government of China, which had been replaced by the Communists in 1949 and had moved to Formosa, and the CIA’s Operation Paper supported invasion attempts from Burma by the Kuomintang, which it was hoped might draw some troops away from the Korean conflict.
    Not every mission was a success, and misjudgements could have catastrophic consequences. Details of one such, in which agents John T. Downey and Richard G. Fecteau were shot down on their first mission over northern China in 1952, were only released under the Freedom of Information Act in 2011. Believing that they were extracting an undercover agent, they were actually walking into a trap. Their plane was shot down, and both men were captured alive, tortured and put on trial by the Chinese, and then held prisoner for the next twenty years. Although the CIA initially told their families that they had been lost in a CAT plane crash, back channel diplomacy would eventually lead to their release. Jack Downey refused to return to the Agency, pointing out, ‘I don’t think I’m cut out for this line of work!’ Both men were able to retire with full pensions from the CIA and were awarded the Director’s Medal for Extraordinary Fidelity at a special ceremony at CIA Headquarters in 1998.
    While the CIA was concentrating on the conflict in south-east Asia, the FBI was having more success winding up Russian networks. The arrest in Britain of atomic scientist Klaus Fuchs as a result of the Venona project would lead to many more agents coming to light. Interrogated by MI5’s James Skardon, Fuchs tried to conceal his contacts’ identities, but Skardon did learn about a courier named ‘Raymond’, to whom Fuchs had