Herald Columnist
In ‘The Nation’

Herald readers may be interested to know that Haviland Smith, author of thoughtful political articles in this paper, has been mentioned in an article in the national liberal magazine "The Nation."

Haviland was a C.IA. station chief in the mid-east, a resident of Brookfield and member of St. John’s Church from 1980 to 2000, an occasional political lecturer in Brookfield and Randolph, and is the author of unusually thoughtful commentary in the Herald. His talks and articles have been critical of the Bush administration’s policies, and are notable for an air of realism characteristic of an insider who knows what he’s talking about.

I knew Haviland and his charming wife Dolores, also a former C.I.A. official, as members of St. John’s Church. Here Haviland was a genial friend, expert at making delicious soup and identifying wild mushrooms.

The reference to Haviland in The Nation was in the July 14 issue on page 40, in an article describing a tour by vice-president Johnson of the C.I.A. office in Berlin when Haviland was on its staff. The article states that the agency’s director, Richard Helms, knowing that public exposure of the agency’s failures would mean the agency’s end, decided to lie.

"The Berlin Chief, Bill Graver, wowed the vice-president with stories about how many East Germans, Czechs and Poles, military officers and civilians, were snitching on the Soviet empire.

"‘However if you knew what we had,’ recalled Graver’s subordinate Haviland Smith, ‘you knew that the penetration of the Polish military mission was the guy who sold papers on the corner;’ not the roster of well-placed finks peddled to a starry-eyed L.B.J….

"Helms, as luminous a star as the C.I.A. ever produced, was eventually convicted of lying to Congress under oath."

Ernest Wright

Randolph

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