blunt description of his career, which spanned over three decades, will motivate you to reexamine your position. You might find reassurance that there are others like Dick Holm serving this country, people who are dedicated to protecting the United States and willing to face danger routinely as part of their job. We all owe a great debt to him, and to these men and women.
Dick writes convincingly about a host of other subjects, such as geopolitics, the Vietnam War, Bill Clinton’s shameful treatment of the clandestine service, the aftermath of 9/11, the operational compromise in Paris, and the distressing incompetence of a few of the CIA directors he served. But I’ll leave them for him to reveal and you to discover. Just be assured that within these pages there’s a comprehensive narrative about how the craft of intelligence has evolved over the past 50 years.
Oh, and that briefcase? Soon after Dick arrived at Brooke, a nice-looking man approached me. He smiled, turned discreetly, and showed me his identification card. “I understand you might have a briefcase,” he said. “May I please have it?”
Even in pain and clinging to life, Dick Holm couldn’t be anything but a dedicated professional.
Timothy Miller M.D.
Professor of Surgery, Chief of Plastic Surgery, UCLA School of Medicine
Executive Director, Operation Mend
Los Angeles, California
PROLOGUE
February 27, 1965
The Boeing 707 jetliner streaked across the Atlantic. In my mostly unconscious state I had no idea where the plane was headed or that it belonged to the U.S. Air Force. I didn’t know that in its large, open compartment it carried, along with me, only a burn specialist, two nurses and a corpsman. I didn’t know that Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara had dispatched the flight at the behest of John McCone, the Director of Central Intelligence.
I also didn’t know that around my neck hung a crucifix on a silver chain, a parting gift of faith by a Belgian priest whose name I would learn later.
All I knew, vaguely, was that I was still alive. Four men had walked and ridden bicycles a hundred miles across enemy-held territory to reach help for me. A nameless Azande witch doctor had treated my wounds, protecting them from infection, dehydration and those relentless insects. Another Belgian—a doctor in Leopoldville—had refused to accept that my condition was fatal.
And somehow, some way, by my own stubbornness I had refused to die.
PART I. TRAINING
1. An Intangible Difference
Washington, D.C. 1961
My career with the Central Intelligence Agency began unofficially just before Thanksgiving 1960 when I drove my black Volkswagen convertible from Fort Dix, New Jersey, to the recruiting office on 16th Street, Northwest, in Washington, D.C. I had purchased the VW during my stint of nearly two years at Camp Bussac, north of Bordeaux, France, where I had worked in the Army’s Counter Intelligence Corps.
During that time, for reasons I’ll explain, I became interested in joining the CIA after my discharge. But when I mailed in an application they responded by informing me that I could not apply from overseas. So when I arrived at Fort Dix I resolved to drive down to Washington and apply in person, which I did, on an overcast morning in late November.
After I filled out the forms and took the requisite tests the interviewing officer said I could start work immediately—in the file rooms on the night shift. He added that if I performed satisfactorily I could begin advancing through the ranks. But I found the prospect of night work and a long, slow climb to a meaningful assignment disappointing. So I pushed a little, mentioning that I was a college graduate with military experience.
“Oh, this is standard,” he responded.
“But it isn’t what I was hoping for. Aren’t there any other possibilities?”
“There’s Junior Officer Training—the JOT program—but I’m not sure there are openings just now.”
“What’s that program like?”
He explained that JOT prepared promising young candidates for operational assignments abroad.
That sounded more like it and I filled out another application.
The interviewer cautioned me that JOT’s standards were high. Suddenly I regretted the hours I had spent back in college playing basketball and bridge instead of studying in the library, and I wished my grade point average had been higher. On the other hand I had done well on my Graduate Record Examination, enough to earn a slot in the master’s program in economics at Washington University in St. Louis. But given my draft status it was also something I hadn’t pursued. Still I thought it might help my chances.
JOT acceptance or not I decided to wait out the verdict by visiting my family in Kansas City where my parents had moved the summer after I graduated from high school.
I was born on June 20, 1935, in Chicago in the middle of the Great Depression. My parents were both children of immigrants. My father, Carl Willard Holm, was the eldest of three sons in a Swedish family. My mother, Constance Cecilia Laux Holm, was one of eleven children descended from a Prussian grandfather who had made his way to America at the turn of the 20th century.
Both families had modest means and my parents married in 1934 with minimal fanfare. Dad graduated at the top of his class at Lane Technical High School, one of Chicago’s best. He was offered and happily accepted a job with the Illinois Bell Telephone Company, where he was one of about 20,000 employees at the time. In the mid-1950s Dad transferred to AT&T where he helped in the early effort to develop area codes.
When I was about 7 years old, in what was considered at the time a bold move, Dad signed a mortgage and bought our house, a brick bungalow in Elmhurst, a small, quiet, middle-class town about 25 miles west of Chicago. No one on either side of the family had ever left the city but each workday Dad commuted to Illinois Bell’s office by train.
My parents were splendid role models for me and my two brothers, Bob and Greg, and my sister Diann. My childhood in Elmhurst was idyllic and I retain fond memories of my life there, of my friends, of Boy Scouting, and then as now, of sports.
Sports were my passion. We played football in the autumn, baseball in spring and summer, and basketball almost year-round. In the process, as all children do who participate, I learned about winning, losing and playing on a team—I preferred winning.
I resumed my basketball passion a bit when I returned home on that pre-CIA visit. Along with reading as much as I could about the world of intelligence, I played in a lot of pickup games at the local YMCA in between enjoying Mom’s home cooking again.
In February my parents introduced me to a neighbor who had recently fallen into a decent inheritance. When he learned that I had just returned from France he asked me to guide him on a trip to Europe, in return for which he promised to cover all of my expenses. I accepted but told him that I wouldn’t be able to leave until I had heard about the job in Washington.
That news arrived in early April when the agency’s interviewing officer called to tell me I had been accepted. A separate letter arrived a week later instructing
