Theodore George "Ted" Shackley, Jr. (July 16, 1927—December 9, 2002) was an American CIA officer involved in many important and controversial CIA operations during the 1960s and 1970s. About the book: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0700611681/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp;=1789&creative;=9325&creativeASIN;=0700611681&linkCode;=as2&tag;=tra0c7-20&linkId;=058e11dc896b092ac24552404196797c He is one of the most decorated CIA officers. Due to his "light hair and mysterious ways", Shackley was known to his colleagues as "the Blond Ghost". In the early 1960s, Shackley's work included being station chief in Miami, during the period of the Cuban Missile Crisis, as well as the Cuban Project (also known as Operation Mongoose), which he directed. He was also said to be the director of the "Phoenix Program" during the Vietnam War, as well as the CIA station chief in Laos between 1966–1968, and Saigon station chief from 1968 through February 1972. In 1976, he was appointed Associate Deputy Director for Operations, and was in charge of the CIA's worldwide covert operations. Shackley is perhaps best known for his involvement in CIA "black ops." In 1966, Shackley moved on to the Vietnam War, becoming the CIA station chief in Laos between 1966–1968, where he directed the CIA's secret war of pitting the Hmong people villagers against Viet Cong who used the Ho Chi Minh Trail. He also helped coordinate local army efforts against the Pathet Lao and North Vietnamese Army in the northern regions of Laos.[2][3] In late 1968, he then moved on to become station chief for Vietnam (in what was then Saigon). Shackley was responsible for running the Phoenix Program and the so-called Provincial Reconnaissance Units (PRUs), a secret assassination and capture campaign aimed at members of the Viet Cong inurgency's infrastructure. However, in his memoirs Shackley claimed that he had not been the mastermind of the Phoenix Program (which had already started before is arrival in Saigon) and did not even approve of it, given its disappointing effectivity at producing intelligence material and "its poor press image" of being an assassination program rather than one for information procurement.[4][5] In November 1969, he decided a six-months "phase-out" of CIA's involvement in the program before transferring it under South Vietnamese control, CIA agents being replaced by CORDS personnel.[6][7][8] In 1970, after the U.S. Bureau of Narcotics' "Operation Eagle" busted a drug-running scheme, several of the Cuban-Americans involved in the Bay of Pigs Invasion came to work for Shackley and Donald Gregg in Vietnam, including Felix Rodriguez. Shackley served in Vietnam through February 1972 when he returned to Langley, Virginia.[9] The Burmese warlord Khun Sa later accused Shackley of being among the key people that had organised the CIA's (purported) heroin trafficking from the Golden Triangle during that time (together with Deputy Secretary of State-to-be Richard Armitage).[10] According to Thomas Bodenheimer and Robert Gould, Shackley was linked to the Australian Nugan Hand Bank where heroin trade profits worth millions of dollars were transferred to after the Fall of Saigon in 1975. In May 1976, Shackley was made Deputy Director of Covert Operations, serving under CIA director George H.W. Bush. After Jimmy Carter had succeeded Gerald Ford as president and replaced Bush by Stansfield Turner, Shackley was relieved of his deputy directorship in December 1977, before officially retiring from the organization in 1979 – when the Carter administration announced wide cuts in the CIA's network of officers and informants. Reportedly, he was forced out of the CIA by Turner who disapproved of Shackley’s close involvement with former agent Edwin P. Wilson (who had become an arms dealer) and an ex-CIA employee, Frank Terpil (who in 1981 defected to Libya and later to Cuba). Shackley was suspected by federal prosecutor Lawrence Barcella to be part of Wilson's Egyptian-American Transport and Services Corporation (EATSCO), a front for his arms smuggling which was also accused of fraudulently billing the Department of Defense "some $8 million". However, Barcella was asked by Michael Ledeen not to investigate Shackley, hinting that the abusive billing had been needed for a covert operation. At that time, Shackley claimed that he would have become CIA director if President Gerald Ford had been reelected in 1976 and that only this investigation kept him from becoming CIA director or deputy director under new president Ronald Reagan.[16] In 1982, Wilson was convicted for selling 22 tons of "Composition 4" plastic explosive to Muammar al-Gaddafi's Libya, and also on the charge of exporting guns. On October 29, 2003, the conviction on the explosives charge was reversed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodore_Shackley Image By Originaly uploaded by the National Library of Wales [CC BY-SA 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

• published: 12 Feb 2016
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