Read Online The Billion Dollar Spy: A True Story of Cold War Espionage and Betrayal by David E. Hoffman - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: David E. Hoffman
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Stansfield Turner grew up in Highland Park, Illinois, an affluent small town on the lakeshore north of Chicago with stately homes and tree-lined streets. His father, Oliver, was a self-made businessman who filled the house with books. His mother drilled into him values of honesty and integrity. Turner became an Eagle Scout and president of his high school class, went on to Amherst College, and, after a lobbying campaign by his father, won admission to the U.S. Naval Academy. When he graduated in June 1946, Turner stood at 25th in a class of 841. He was at the top of the class in aptitude for service—qualities of leadership, integrity, reliability, and other traits of a superior officer. But Turner chafed at the academy’s courses, heavily oriented toward engineering, seamanship, and science. His interests ran far beyond. Rather than plunge immediately into a navy career, Turner won a prestigious Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford University, where he studied politics, philosophy, and economics. 2
On returning to the navy, Turner went to sea on destroyers but was impatient with the minutiae of shipboard life. He wanted to think big and be at the center of change. In the 1950s, he was selected by a new chief of naval operations, Arleigh Burke, to put together a group of junior officers to tell Burke what was wrong with the navy and how to fix it, an assignment Turner found exhilarating. Then Turner was selected to work with the whiz kids under Robert McNamara in the 1960s, when systems analysis was all the rage. When Admiral Elmo Zumwalt became the new chief of naval operations in 1970, he put Turner in charge of new initiatives in his first sixty days. Through it all, Turner became convinced the military was hidebound and desperately needed new thinking. He once used systems analysis to study naval minesweeping and showed how it could be done better and faster from a helicopter than from a ship. Yet Turner’s zeal for change often ran headlong into inertia, especially in the Vietnam War years, when military morale and discipline were sapped by defeat and a loss of support at home. Appointed commander of the Naval War College in 1972, Turner seized the opportunity to overhaul the curriculum, making it more rigorous and demanding. Through all his assignments, he preached the virtues of discipline and accountability.
Turner’s class at the U.S. Naval Academy included a somewhat shy and skinny fellow from a backwater peanut farm in Georgia, Jimmy Carter, who also applied for a Rhodes Scholarship but did not get it. Carter stood at fifty-ninth in the class. Carter and Turner did not know each other then. Carter went on to become a nuclear submariner, farmer, and governor of Georgia. In 1973, Turner invited Carter to speak at the war college and was impressed. The following year, in October 1974, they met again at Carter’s offices in Atlanta. Carter fired rapid questions at Turner for half an hour about the state of the U.S. military and the navy. When it was over, Carter said, “By the way, the day after tomorrow, I am announcing that I’m going to run for president of the United States.”
Carter triumphed in the 1976 presidential campaign by emphasizing trust to a nation battered by the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal. He projected a fresh, moralistic approach to government—“I’ll never tell a lie”—and a break with the sordid scandals in Washington. Among them, in Carter’s view, were the disclosures, starting in late 1974, of illegal CIA surveillance of American citizens, including antiwar activists. Three separate investigations of the CIA followed over the next sixteen months, revealing more unsavory operations. When Carter took office in January 1977, the CIA was still reeling from these probes. 3 The agency had three directors in four years. The outgoing director, George H. W. Bush, a Republican appointed by President Ford, was affable and well liked at the CIA, and he wanted to
Stansfield Turner grew up in Highland Park, Illinois, an affluent small town on the lakeshore north of Chicago with stately homes and tree-lined streets. His father, Oliver, was a self-made businessman who filled the house with books. His mother drilled into him values of honesty and integrity. Turner became an Eagle Scout and president of his high school class, went on to Amherst College, and, after a lobbying campaign by his father, won admission to the U.S. Naval Academy. When he graduated in June 1946, Turner stood at 25th in a class of 841. He was at the top of the class in aptitude for service—qualities of leadership, integrity, reliability, and other traits of a superior officer. But Turner chafed at the academy’s courses, heavily oriented toward engineering, seamanship, and science. His interests ran far beyond. Rather than plunge immediately into a navy career, Turner won a prestigious Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford University, where he studied politics, philosophy, and economics. 2
On returning to the navy, Turner went to sea on destroyers but was impatient with the minutiae of shipboard life. He wanted to think big and be at the center of change. In the 1950s, he was selected by a new chief of naval operations, Arleigh Burke, to put together a group of junior officers to tell Burke what was wrong with the navy and how to fix it, an assignment Turner found exhilarating. Then Turner was selected to work with the whiz kids under Robert McNamara in the 1960s, when systems analysis was all the rage. When Admiral Elmo Zumwalt became the new chief of naval operations in 1970, he put Turner in charge of new initiatives in his first sixty days. Through it all, Turner became convinced the military was hidebound and desperately needed new thinking. He once used systems analysis to study naval minesweeping and showed how it could be done better and faster from a helicopter than from a ship. Yet Turner’s zeal for change often ran headlong into inertia, especially in the Vietnam War years, when military morale and discipline were sapped by defeat and a loss of support at home. Appointed commander of the Naval War College in 1972, Turner seized the opportunity to overhaul the curriculum, making it more rigorous and demanding. Through all his assignments, he preached the virtues of discipline and accountability.
Turner’s class at the U.S. Naval Academy included a somewhat shy and skinny fellow from a backwater peanut farm in Georgia, Jimmy Carter, who also applied for a Rhodes Scholarship but did not get it. Carter stood at fifty-ninth in the class. Carter and Turner did not know each other then. Carter went on to become a nuclear submariner, farmer, and governor of Georgia. In 1973, Turner invited Carter to speak at the war college and was impressed. The following year, in October 1974, they met again at Carter’s offices in Atlanta. Carter fired rapid questions at Turner for half an hour about the state of the U.S. military and the navy. When it was over, Carter said, “By the way, the day after tomorrow, I am announcing that I’m going to run for president of the United States.”
Carter triumphed in the 1976 presidential campaign by emphasizing trust to a nation battered by the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal. He projected a fresh, moralistic approach to government—“I’ll never tell a lie”—and a break with the sordid scandals in Washington. Among them, in Carter’s view, were the disclosures, starting in late 1974, of illegal CIA surveillance of American citizens, including antiwar activists. Three separate investigations of the CIA followed over the next sixteen months, revealing more unsavory operations. When Carter took office in January 1977, the CIA was still reeling from these probes. 3 The agency had three directors in four years. The outgoing director, George H. W. Bush, a Republican appointed by President Ford, was affable and well liked at the CIA, and he wanted to
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