Good Hunting: An American Spymaster's Story by Jack Devine, Vernon Loeb Page A

as it became increasingly antigovernment.
    Our involvement in El Mercurio was this: we gave the paper roughly $2 million, but our purpose was the opposite of co-opting it. What we wanted was to ensure continued press freedom. True, there was no official censorship by the Allende government; half a dozen dailies in Santiago represented the full spectrum of political opinion, and each operated independently. However, shortly after my arrival, the government blocked El Mercurio ’s access to newsprint. This, along with cutbacks in advertising and labor unrest, threatened to shut it down, and that would have been a tremendous loss.
    One of my first cables from the field was a request for $1 million to keep the paper afloat. A declassified memorandum 10 shows that the request was the subject of a lively discussion in the 40 Committee, the covert action subcommittee of the National Security Council. I knew nothing of this at the time. I knew only that I received an okay to provide El Mercurio with an initial sum of $700,000, but it had to be orchestrated through a very complex funding mechanism. It was a valuable education for me in high finance and clandestine funding mechanisms.
    We also had sources inside the Chilean military. But the Church Committee overestimated our military ties, which were not nearly as numerous or important as our assets in the media and political parties. We weren’t getting regular information from flag-rank officers, and we didn’t have close ties to any of the decision makers—though not for lack of trying. Fred Latrash had, as his top priority, making friends and recruiting sources in the military. To help with this effort, he joined the military riding club, which was an important social milieu, and even bought an “operational horse” with headquarters’ approval. The horse was named Bismarck. One afternoon, I could hear the normally soft-spoken station chief vigorously dressing down Fred. Though his voice was raised, I couldn’t tell what the issue was, but I noticed on the table outside Ray’s office, where the day’s cables were displayed, a memo explaining that Bismarck had died from lack of use and requesting that headquarters write the animal off as a loss on our books. I surmised the absurdity of writing off an “ops horse” must have driven Ray up the wall.
    Fred, nonetheless, was very effective in meeting a wide range of army officers. But, to the best of my knowledge, none of them ended up in the recruitment column. One of his most memorable contacts was General Augusto Pinochet, who would also become one of Fred’s most memorable misjudgments. Fred was unimpressed with him, feeling he was too weak ever to lead a coup. In the end, we had no meaningful relationship with Pinochet before the coup. We did, however, have good insight into the Allende government through our contacts in the Communist Party. Its members turned out to be keen analysts and worthy assets. At one point, they secured for me a typewriter and blank Communist Party letterhead. I never did make use of these things. As it turns out, that was for the best.
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    When we arrived in Santiago, Pat located a lovely house for us three blocks from the Russian embassy. After we moved in, I was struck by how many cats there were in the neighborhood. I mentioned this to one of the old-timers in the office. He laughed and told me an operational secret: several months earlier one of our officers decided to tweak the Russians by placing an ad in the local press that said that anyone who delivered a cat to the front door of their embassy would receive a handful of escudos, the local currency. Dozens of people showed up with stray cats, demanding payment. When the embassy refused to compensate them for the cats, the visitors left the cats and walked away, thus infesting the neighborhood with strays.
    The Russians were mightily annoyed and reciprocated with a similar operation. Unfortunately, this type of