The Last Spy (2025) Movie Script

1
curious strings
Really fun and games, isn't it?
[chuckles]
Okay.
[filmmaker] Do you feel all
your work in the CIA made a
difference?
I don't think all my
work made a difference,
but I think some of it
made a great difference.

[ambient street noise]
-Good morning.
-[filmmaker] How are you?
I'm still alive.
[Sylvia VO] I think he was
very disappointed in the CIA.
I think he was relieved
not to be part of that
organization anymore, because
of what they represented,
um, and very clear about the
fact that they didn't represent
that when he began there.
[Stella VO] When he left
-- "Why did you leave?!
Why didn't you stay a
little more to get a big...
[chuckling] a big
pension, a good pension?"
He said, "I
couldn't do it anymore."
He had realized that they
were doing things that he didn't
like.
He thought were dangerous,
in a way -- about America,
about democracy.
Peter is almost too
honest, too civic-minded.
[filmmaker VO] Most people
would think that's a good thing.
Yeah, I suppose, I suppose.
I have to stop myself and say,
"But that's a very good thing."
But it can be annoying.
It's too much so, you know...
No matter how
intimate he is with someone,
he'll always tell them the
truth about what he sees,
and he's not afraid of conflict.
Like, it's fascinating to me.
Like, he's not afraid of...
saying something that might
bring conflict into the...
into the relationship.
And it's never kind of...
it's never in
this, like, angry way.
It's just "I'm seeing the
facts and here they are."
upbeat
marching band music
I grew up in a very...
very privileged position.
The Sichel family were merchants
in the back country of the
Rhine.
My great-grandfather moved
with three of his sons to Mainz
in the late 19th Century,
established a wine business,
became extremely successful,
established a
business in Bordeaux,
another one in London,
and another one in New York.
[clinking]
We were one of the families
in Mainz everybody knew.
Very early in my life,
I found, basically,
that I'm a happy person,
because my mother was
always a happy person.
My father was always insecure.
He was insecure financially.
I remember when my mother
served chicken during the week,
he said, "We can't afford it.
We should eat
chicken only on Sundays."
[laughs]
And my sister
believed it and I didn't.
[laughs]
I knew we were Jewish.
It didn't make any
difference because
we were not
observant Jews in that way.
We went to the
synagogue on New Year's.
We went to the synagogue on
Yom Kippur.
I stopped going there
when my father said,
"Peter,
you either go to school
or you go to Yom Kippur,"
and I said, "I'd
rather go to school."
I did not believe in
God very early in life.
[filmmaker VO] So, when was sort
of the first indication in your
happy life that something
is going terribly wrong?
My mother made it clear
from the day Hitler took over.
[crowd cheering]
My mother wanted to
leave Germany in '34.
She said, "All the Jews
are going to get killed.
Get out while you
can take money out."
And they all
thought she was mad.
But she said, "These
people are different.
These people are
willing to kill
to stay in power."
She always told my father, "You
must read the enemies' press."
She also had read Mein Kampf.
She was
politically very conscious;
my father was not.
My father finally came around
in '35 after the Nuremberg Laws,
where the Jews lost
their civil rights,
and when my father agreed with
my mother that you cannot live
in a country where you
don't have civil rights.
And, at the same time, my
parents made an application
to be permitted
to leave Germany;
you couldn't leave
without a permission.
It never came to a resolution.
[filmmaker VO] So, how
did you manage to leave?
Well, we left illegally.
tense somber music
And then my parents went to
Bordeaux to take over the
management of the
Bordeaux company.

And then the war started.
tense music
[man VO] Poland, September 1939.
The German foe begins its
ruthless march of conquest,
and sets the stage
for War World II.
[blasts]
[Peter VO] My mother
said, "We must get out.
The French are
going to collapse."
And, obviously, my
father said, "Don't be silly!
I mean, the French are
rich, they have resources,
they have an
army, they have this,
they have that."
My mother said, "The
world has changed."
In any case,
they did not leave.
We were not
interned right away,
but when the Germans
started to invade France,
we were interned
because we were enemy aliens --
my father and I in a man's camp,
and my sister and my mother
in Gurs, in the Pyrenees.
[filmmaker] Who else
was in the internment camp,
everybody German?
There were Germans -- both
Nazis and Jewish refugees.

Well, when finally, the
Germans got within...
one or two days of the camp,
we went to the
commander and said,
"You know, if you
don't let us go,
the Germans are
going to get us,
and that'll be the end of us."
So, he gave us a pass to leave
the camp and go anywhere we
wanted to
in the rest of France,
and just let us run.
suspenseful music
We saw tens of thousands of
people streaming down south
on the main road from
Bordeaux to the Pyrenees.

And then, we had
the German Stukas,
who came
and strafed the
refugees on the road.
And when we heard the
Stukas coming down,
we jumped off to
the side of the road
and hid in the ditch.
[gunfire]

We didn't know where
we were going to sleep,
we didn't know where we were
going to get the next meal,
we didn't know if we
were going to survive,
and that whole feeling of being
totally kicked out of society,
basically.
We don't know what
tomorrow is going to be.
And would we ultimately be
able to get out of France?
It was at that stage that I
became the support of my father.
The relationship between father
and son changed right then.
My father lost his nerves
because everything that my
mother told him for years was
happening.
And he was without any hope.
And I said, you know,
"We've got to go on.
We've got to find my mother.
We've gotta..."
et cetera.
[filmmaker VO] How old were you?
[Peter VO] I was 19.
[filmmaker VO] And how did you
meet up with your mother and
your sister?
[Peter VO] My father and I found
them on the street in Gurs.
They were released as we were.
The French were
extremely well organized,
so we were assigned to
be lodged in a chateau
in a little town called Escout.
And that's where we
spent the next...
four, five months.
[boat horn]
When we finally got a
visa to the United States,
we arrived in New
York, and it was very...
it was a a nice, sunny day.
There was a feeling of security.
We were extremely well
received by relatives;
they couldn't have been nicer.
And then, we subleased an
apartment on 80th Street and
Lexington Avenue.
And we found out very quickly
that we were near
a concentration the
Nazis in New York
in Yorktown.
86th Street was a Nazi-dominated
Street in New York,
where they all loved Hitler.
You had German
restaurants, German cafes,
German movies, where they
showed 'Sieg Im Westen,'
the movie made by the Nazis
of their conquest of France.
triumphant music
You had parades of
the German Bund.
You had this enormous
demonstration; the
Bund was organizing
at the Madison Square Gardens.
military drums
And then, you had the
America First movement,
where Lindbergh was one
of the main organizers
talking about America
not getting into the war.
[Lindbergh] If you believe that
this country should not enter
the war in Europe, we ask
you to join the America First
committee!
[applause]
[Peter VO] It was not a
very nice atmosphere.
There was great
discrimination against Jews.
They couldn't
belong to certain clubs.
They couldn't go
to certain hotels.
They couldn't go to
certain restaurants.
But, after a while,
I got used to it.
[chuckles]
[planes buzzing]
[blasts]
[man VO] No American will ever
forget this Sunday morning in
Hawaii.
Pearl Harbor was a
very happy day for us.
Finally, America was
getting into the war.
Number one,
we could get rid of all those
German Bund and what have you.
[man VO] You will now take the
solemn oath of allegiance to
your flag and to your country...
[Peter VO] Number two,
we could concentrate on
defeating Nazi Germany.
[men] I pledge allegiance...
[Peter VO] And I volunteered
after Pearl Harbor for the Army,
and my parents were
proud that I did it.
[man VO] Well, here I am,
a GI Joe.
And it ain't bad.
[men chanting] One!
Two!
Three!
Four!
One, two, three, four!
One, two, three, four!...
[Peter VO] And then, one day I
was asked to join two gentlemen
in civilian clothes
who knew that I had
lived in the Pyrenees,
who spoke with me in French to
find out how good my French was,
and then asked me if I was
willing to be dropped behind the
enemy lines
in France.
And I said, "I'm a soldier.
I joined the Army
to defeat Hitler."
And that is where my
career in the OSS started.
[Stephen VO] The United
States never had a peace-time
intelligence service.
Now, with war going on, we're
gonna need a Secret Service,
and President Franklin Roosevelt
created what became known as the
Office of Strategic Services.
[Adam VO] The Russians had
an intelligence service,
Britain had one,
France had had one,
so America needed one too.
If it's going to
enter a global war,
it needs a global reach.
So, the OSS was founded by
people who were drawn from the
traditional elites
of American society,
partly because these people had
some international experience --
they knew how the world works --
so they were natural recruits.
But then, they recruited
anybody that specialized
and was knowledgeable
in the many areas of the
world we were working in --
foreign-born experts.
tense curious music
I was put on a truck to a...
a training camp.
[man VO] The identities
of the recruits remain a
carefully-guarded secret, which
explains the use of masks in
this film.
[Peter VO] We
were trained --
in unconventional
warfare, in how to...
pick locks, how to start a
car if you don't have keys,
how to kill people
with a knife.
[man VO] In this phase of
the instruction period,
the student is taught
the gentle art of murder,
the technique of killing or
crippling his opponent with his
two hands.
The most valuable offensive
blow at close quarters
is the chin jab.
As the blow is launched, the
knee comes up to the testicles,
and the fingers close
on the opponents' eyes.
If your adversary holds
you up from the rear,
pin his gun arm and
lock it with your left,
bringing the knee
up to his testicles.
Any one of these blows
will put a man out of action.
[Peter VO] And then,
after three or four weeks,
I was sent back to Washington,
and informed that the mission
for which I had been recruited
had been scrapped.
And that is when they
found me a job in Algiers.
[filmmaker VO] What were the
Americans actually doing in
Algiers?
[Peter VO] We trained the agents
for the resistance groups in
France, and also trained
intelligence agents we sent into
France.
When the planning started for
the invasion of Southern France,
I was assigned to the OSS unit
with the 7th Army.
But we soon found out
that, whereas
everybody spoke French,
nobody spoke German.
And suddenly, I was
very much needed
in recruiting
German prisoners of war,
and finding out if
they're willing
to serve as American agents.
The thing that's
shocking about Peter Sichel:
he became the chief of the OSS
detachment for the 7th Army,
which -- was about 100
men -- at the age of 22.
At that age, he's kind
of calling the shots,
which is really
quite remarkable.
[filmmaker VO] One of your
operations was made into a
movie?
Did the movie sort of
define that period for you?
Yeah.
dramatic
suspenseful music
We ended up going to POW camps,
showing the file of the person
they recommended, and then
meeting them face to face and
discussing their life.
-Morning, sir!
-[man] You wanted to see me?
What's it all about?
I want to work for you, and I
thought you might be able to
help me.
Do you know what
you're getting into?
It doesn't matter.
And you get a...
Fingerspitzengefhl -- a
sensitivity to what that person
really is.
Hold it!
[Peter VO] We gave the man a
new identity in the German army.
Let's go over it once more.
What name are you
traveling under?
Steiner Karl, Luftwaffe medic.
Number L43587.
[Peter VO] And gave him
marching orders to find out the
disposition of the enemy.

-[man] Target!
-[buzzer]
[Peter VO] The OSS was the
only agency that handled
clandestine operations,
with the support of the Army.
We had the Army providing
planes to drop agents into enemy
territories, we had the Army
supply planes in order to send
weapons and other
material to resistance groups.
It was a
cooperative arrangement.
And the only person who
didn't want to deal with OSS was
Patton.
He considered all
intelligence shit.
He's considered a hero,
but he was a bad general.
He was a very stupid man.
[man VO] The
long, slippery roads.
The infantry of the American 7th
Army slogs toward battle through
the Ardennes Forest.
ominous music
[Peter VO] He advanced the
7th Army and ended up in the
Ardennes in the winter,
and was cut off
by the Germany army,
and lost an
enormous amount of people.
If he had listened
to intelligence,
he would have known before.
[filmmaker VO] Did you meet him?
[Peter VO] Once.
It was on the subject of
briefing him that he could not
advance any further, because his
flanks were being endangered.
[filmmaker] And
what did he say?
"That's a lot of shit."
I was north of Munich --
maybe 15 kilometers
north of Dachau --
when the war ended.
[filmmaker VO] At the time, did
you know about the Holocaust?
No.
I did not know
about the Holocaust...
until, at the end of the war,
we overran Dachau.
Very late.
It was known at another
level, but not at my level,
so it wasn't a
conversation piece.
[filmmaker] It wasn't
a conversation piece?
It wasn't!
I mean, people have
to get used to it.
It was known,
but only to the
people in charge.
It wasn't publicized.
[filmmaker] So
nobody ever talked,
as you moved forward, about the
fact that Jewish families had
been picked up, had
been transported to...
No, that Jewish families had
been transported into labor
camps, yes.
That they were...
killed methodically, no.
It was more than you
could absorb and accept.
You know, it was...
so fantastic,
so awful,
so...
inhuman...
that you somehow couldn't...
absorb it.
And it remained
that for a long time.
A certain number
of Germans knew,
but we made them
conscious of it.
So, films were made
of the death camps,
and the population was
forced to go see these films...
to see what had been done,
to see the extent of the
destruction of the Jews.
And where the population
centers were close enough to
concentration camps, the
population was sent by bus
and forced to go
through these camps.
And that was a policy
that Eisenhower, as
the Supreme Commander,
instigated the
minute Germany gave up.
Reeducation was a very important
part of the occupation.
[blast]
[Bettina VO] He's never, ever,
ever talked about the Holocaust.
There were many times when
something would trigger a
memory, and it
usually was a negative one.
It's very rare to see him
emotional and this was kind of
an emotional moment, but he told
me a story about the internment
camp he was in, and he
saw his relative there,
a cousin, and Peter tried
to convince him to leave.
Then, after about an
hour, he had to go,
and he left and didn't make
his cousin come with him.
And the next day, he
went to the camps and died.
But that was a story
I'd never heard before.
There were a lot of people who
came to me to tell me how much
they hated the Nazis, and what
they had all done to help Jews.
And I had one reaction:
"I don't want to know.
You must live with
your conscience.
I don't want to know
what you did or didn't do.
But don't try to get favor from
something where you
are the only witness."
[cheering]
[man VO] The war in
Europe has ended.
The hour for which the world has
been six years waiting has come.
Unconditionally and finally, our
German enemy has surrendered to
Russia, to Britain
and her commonwealth,
to America, to the millions
who fought with their hearts and
souls...
[Stephen VO] The way World War
II ended told Americans that we
were now the dominant
power in the world.
Now, the Russians might
not have seen it this way.
Certainly, the exclamation point
with which we ended the war --
the dropping of atomic bombs
on Japan -- served not only
to hasten the end of the war,
but to signal
the fact that the United States
now had a weapon that no other
power had.
Symbolically, this was almost as
powerful as the weapon itself.
[blast]
[man VO] This is our
job at Potsdam today:
to erect a structure for
permanent peace upon the
cornerstones already
laid by the Big Three.
[Peter VO] The Potsdam
Conference spelled out in detail
that we were going to administer
Germany with the Russians.
[man VO] The Allies split up
Germany into four occupation
zones:
French, British,
American, and Russian.
Berlin, the capital, was to be
administered jointly until a
peace treaty, permitting all
Germans to decide their own
government, could be arranged.
pensive music
[Peter VO] I went to Berlin
on the first of October '45.

Dick Helms picked
me up at the airport,
and he drove me through the
totally-destroyed parts of
Berlin.

And everybody
looked beaten down.
The lack of any...
men, basically, except
only old men or children,
and largely women...
cleaning up the streets, and
wearing the most extraordinary
clothing.

I was introduced
to Allen Dulles.
He was in Berlin as
nominal head of OSS Germany,
and he asked me, "Peter,
we'd like you to
be on our team,
so will you work
in Germany for OSS
to take over a unit in Berlin
called 'the Peter Unit?'"
I said, "Fine."
End of sentence.
[Scott VO] Richard Helms and
Allen Dulles wanted him to stay
in Germany, both because of
his language and because,
at that point, he'd already been
recognized as one of the best
and the brightest of the OSS.

I think around late
November, early December,
Allen went home --
as did Dick Helms --
and I was asked to head
a combined OSS presence,
and we moved into
our headquarters
in Dahlem.
soft tense music
One of the first targets
we got from Washington
is to check on the
Russian-occupied area in
Germany.
We were contacted by the
so-called "bourgeois parties"
about what was
happening in East Germany.
The Russians had their own plan
to merge the Communist
and the Socialist party,
and to have a one-party
system -- like in Russia --
in their region.
And that was the
first time when we,
on the intelligence side, were
conscious that a cooperation
with the Russians
was impossible.

As of December 1945,
we no longer considered
the Russians friendly.
[man VO] Charged with carrying
out our policies in Germany is
Lieutenant General Clay,
Deputy Military Governor.
[Peter VO] But General
Clay did not accept it yet.
[Scott VO] What was very
interesting is that the American
Military Governor, Lucius Clay,
his whole approach was that he
wanted to make nice
with the Soviets.
So, the more reports that came
in from Peter talking about what
the Soviets were up to and
how they were taking over,
the more Clay pushed
him to the sideline.
It was incredibly frustrating
on Peter's part to get people to
pay attention.
[filmmaker VO] And
you met with Clay?
We met with Clay, and
he did not accept it.
[filmmaker] What
was the dialogue?
There was no dialogue.
We supplied information.
He could accept it,
or he could opine
that it was not reliable.
We didn't...
You know, you
don't take a position.
He did not like the
intelligence service, period.
soft ominous music
[Adam VO] There was
a Communist threat.
Yugoslavia had gone Communist,
the Soviet Union had occupied
Poland, Hungary,
Czechoslovakia, Romania,
and Bulgaria.
So, I think he would have
been very foolish to ignore that
threat.
[Scott VO] Peter was the one who
really lobbied Washington to
say, "Look, the real
game are the Soviets."
And so he was the one who
was kind of instrumental in
redirecting the American
Intelligence Community towards
the Soviets.
[Peter VO] I was asked
to go to Washington,
where I spelled out in detail
what the Russians were
doing in East Germany.
It was the
beginning of the Cold War.
From Stettin in the Baltic
to Trieste in the Adriatic,
an Iron Curtain has
descended across the continent.
Behind that line lie all the
capitals of the ancient states
of Central and Eastern Europe.

[thud]
[filmmaker VO] It's very
interesting because Peter really
brought sort of the first
information back to America that
rang in the Cold War.
I didn't know that.
[filmmaker] And all the
books he's mentioned in,
he's always mentioned for
one thing: the Cold War.
[chatter]
[man VO] Peter Sichel had the
experience and sophistication
which was to be the hallmark of
many successful CIA strategists.
The key people in CIA
all were old OSS officers.
There was a reason for it:
they had the experience,
they had the know-how,
they also had the
enormous amount of motivation,
which carried over into the
initially anti-Communist war.
[man] So, the anti-fascist
movement automatically became
-Anti-Communists?
-Yes.
It was an anti-totalitarian
movement ideologically,
which started with
Fascism and then rolled over to
anti-Communism.
Anything...
because, after all, we saw the
Eastern-European experience of
being absorbed by
Russia, and it was very easy,
ideologically, to follow
from one to the other.
[man] You went into the
CIA; what did you do there?
I was in Germany for a
number of years, in Berlin.
[man] What were you doing there?
I was the top -- the
top CIA man there.
[man] You were
station chief in...
In Berlin.
[filmmaker VO] So,
just to imagine this,
you are 23 years old,
you are looking at rubble
between the two
fronts of the Cold War,
and you're asked to build
a spy network, right?
[Peter VO] Yeah.
Everybody who worked for
Berlin Operations Base
operated out of one office.
It was all in one building.
soft exciting music
When my father first
arrived in Berlin,
Peter was the head of
station -- Chief of Station.
And this was the
first Berlin station.
And this was right after the
transition from OSS to CIA.
and was one of my main
case officers in Berlin.
[John Jr. VO] They would recruit
agents by putting an ad in the
paper, and then they
would just interview them.
And one out of 20,
they would try them out.
So, you always had to go
through a testing period.
how best to
exploit his potential.
[filmmaker] Was it
successful right away?
I mean, where
would you find--
It was highly,
highly unsuccessful.
One of the officials --
the Americans --
had fallen in love
with one of his agents.
This is a no-no,
because if she gets caught,
they have an in on
the case officer.
So, we told the case
officer to get rid of her.
And he wasn't very
discreet about it;
he didn't pay her off,
as he should have...
and made sure that
she was happy...
and she was mad.
[John Jr. VO] And so, she went
about watching him go to work,
to this safehouse -- this
big complex where they went --
called Fhrenweg.
And so, she goes, "Okay,
that's their headquarters."
And then, she took down the
license plate of every car that
went in and
out of Fhrenweg,
and, in a few weeks,
she knew everybody,
and she had their
addresses, and their families,
and everybody in a big notebook.
[phone rings]
And then we told him,
"You've got to make a deal."
[John Jr. VO] And they
said, "Oh, of course!
Of course!
We'll meet you at so-and-so
and we'll have the money."
And they were taking her...
to jail; they
wanted to put her away!
And a priest came on
the phone and said,
"I think you better come
here and settle it peacefully."
And we paid her a tidy
sum to keep her mouth shut.
That's the thing about
spies: you never know...
You have to
assume that they're...
if things change,
that they'll turn.
[John Jr. VO] The
mission was to...
to recruit the Nazis,
because the Nazis had an
excellent overview of all the
Soviet operations,
and to find out as much as
possible what the Soviets were
up to.
And he and the other
informants ended up in long
prison sentences in Russia.
[filmmaker] But they
were lucky not to get shot.
Well, some people
probably were shot.
[train horn]
[John Jr. VO] My
father lost a few agents,
and I think that was
very painful for him.
I mean, there was one who...
was laid on a train track,
and they found his head.
We did not have the type of
professionalism of running
secret agents, and we
learned how to run them...
[filmmaker VO] Did it make
you uncomfortable working with
Nazis?
They were like the
backdrop in a play.
No emotional involvement.
ominous music
[President Truman VO] The
Soviet Union and its agents have
destroyed the independence
and democratic character of
a whole series of nations in
Eastern and Central Europe.
It is this ruthless
course of action,
and the clear design to extend
it to the remaining free nations
of Europe, that have brought
about the critical situation in
Europe today.
Truman stated that
wherever a free society
was being threatened,
America would interfere
and defend that free society,
and this containment
philosophy developed to prevent
any other further expansion
of the Soviet Empire.

Interfering in the
politics of other countries
can be both beneficial
and counterproductive.
Take Italy.
If we had not interfered in
those elections after the war,
Italy would have
become Communist
and destabilized
the rest of Europe.
Italy was absolutely crucial
to the future of Europe, and on
the verge and constantly on the
edge of becoming a
Communist country,
and clearly, the CIA
kept that from happening.
The whole idea of fighting
the Soviets was done covertly;
that was the policy.
There's no question about that.
And it was the object of
huge amounts of money,
huge amounts of propaganda, huge
amounts of covert operations,
infiltration of
foreign political parties,
and so that's what we
did in the Cold War.
[filmmaker VO] How did the
Soviets react to all that CIA
build up?
They wanted us out of
Berlin, almost at any price.
Their fright was you had a
non-controllable element
in the center of East Germany
that made East
Germany insecure to govern.
They considered West
Berlin like an ulcer
in a body they
otherwise could control,
and that is why they
started the blockade.
[Peter VO] We could accept it
and agree to abandon Berlin,
which, for a time, part of the
American government wanted to
do.
Or, we could try to
supply Berlin by air.
[man VO] The West
took up the challenge.
soft tense music
[General Clay VO] Each day now,
our airplanes are carrying in a
little more than
Berlin's minimum needs,
thus building up a stockpile
for the most severe winter
months yet ahead.
[Scott VO] The great
irony is that Lucius Clay,
the American
Military Governor who had,
for two years, summarily
dismissed all the warnings from
Peter and from other people
about the Soviet intentions,
sends this cable to the Joint
Chiefs of Staff in Washington
saying that the Soviets
might attack at any moment.
And, naturally, it set
off these alarm bells,
and Peter was one of the
people sent out to figure out:
was this really going to happen,
and was the Red Army in a
position to come
across the border?
They assumed the
Soviets would attack.
They assumed that there
would be a third World War.
And my father kept that
assumption for years.
[Peter VO] We were afraid
that somebody in the Soviet
hierarchy
would dream of using East
German so-called "soldiers"
to spearhead an attempt to
take over West Germany --
not Europe, West Germany --
and use the East
Germans as a first wave,
then supported by
freedom fighters from Russia.
They could have very easily
put Russian soldiers into
East German soldiers' uniforms.

[Scott VO] They sent hundreds
of spies on tourist missions.
People just going into the
countryside on bicycles or
taking a train to another
city to visit their sister.
[Peter VO] It did not require
sophisticated methodology.
So, by agents placed
all over East Germany,
we were able to find out
that their intentions were not
aggressive,
because you don't march
without supplies, you
don't march without troops,
you don't march
without the railways,
you don't march
without tanks and armaments
and planes.
There was never any
preparation to march.
[man VO] And the Soviet gave up.
Their blockade was lifted.
For 15 months, the Berlin
airlift carried nearly about two
and a half million
tons of food and fuel
on 277,264 separate planes.
triumphant music
[filmmaker VO] What do you
feel was the most important
achievement of you as
station chief in Berlin?
I think the most important
achievement was to find out that
the Russians had no intention
to marching west.
Period.
[filmmaker] Why was
there even a Cold War?
Good question.
[blast]
[man VO] President Truman's
dramatic announcement that
Russia had the atom secret
caused state departments all
over the world to stir uneasily.
Will the atom be a grim
vision of an atomic war?
1950 may tell the tale.
The Cold War is...
defining in terms of who we
are and were as a country,
and it is the
most complex of all
policy, cultural,
political events
of my lifetime.
It was a time of the
Un-American Committee,
it was a time of Joe McCarthy.
It's a turbulent time.
[McCarthy VO] Are you a
member of the Communist Party,
or have you ever been a
member of the Communist Party?
It's unfortunate and tragic
that I have to teach to this
committee the basic
principle of Americanism.
[McCarthy] That's
not the question!
For instance, in grammar school,
we would have air raid drills
every couple of days, in which
the sirens would sound all over
town simultaneously.
They were scary, loud sirens.
[man VO] It's a bomb!
Duck and cover!
And we would go under our desks,
and we would put our hands over
our heads...
[man VO] You might be eating
your lunch when the flash comes.
Duck and cover under the table.
And wait for the Russians to
come bomb us until there was an
all-clear.
[filmmaker VO] What was the
reaction in the CIA to the
Soviets testing and
producing nuclear weapons?
Surprise...
that they were able
to do it so quickly,
and basically, a
certain amount of fright --
what they're going to
do with the new toys.
We did not know about
it, and that was...
a intelligence failure.
[filmmaker] How come
you didn't know about it?
We didn't have the
agent to tell us.
Our Soviet agents we
got very much later.
We had a whole slew of
Soviet agents later on,
after they lost
faith in their country.
Motivation...
is the most important
thing in high-level spies.
[filmmaker VO] What does he
have that makes a good spy?
[Bettina VO] Well, I mean, he
is definitely good at keeping
secrets.
He's also good at
getting people to talk.
You know, he's got a very
charming way about him,
people...
like him.
You know, he's
sort of good at...
you know,
generating confidences.
Um...
Yeah, you know,
he's a smart cookie!
I really want to know
if he killed somebody.
I've asked him, and
he never has answered.
And that might be kind of
a gruesome thing to say,
but it is something you think
about when your parent has lived
through what my dad
has lived through.
[filmmaker VO] What
areas do you think he feels
or shows his vulnerability?
You know, that's a complicated
question because he's older now,
so, when you're that old --
when you're 100 --
you tend to show
vulnerability more.
[filmmaker] What was your
greatest vulnerability?
My lack of knowledge of women.
[laughs]
[chatter and upbeat piano]
I was famous for giving a
good New Year's Eve party.
[laughs]
[Peter VO] I had lots of liquor.
One of my friends brought
a young lady --
a blonde --
by the name of
Qui Htler.
I was 28, she was 24,
and I fell in love with her.
A coup de foudre --
love at first sight.
I insisted on marrying her.
She said, "Why don't we
just continue being lovers?
I'm not the marrying type."
But I insisted, so we
got married in Ksnacht,
in Switzerland,
and I had the wedding
reception at the Hotel Dolder.
Then, I came to the States
and I worked in Washington.
upbeat curious music
I bought a house on Western
Avenue with a nice garden,
and I lived there for
the next four years.
We had a very
active social life
within the CIA family,
and we often had
dinner at the F Club.
The F Club was called "Spy Club"
because a lot of the CIA people
were in it.
We drank an enormous
amount of liquor --
a couple of cocktails for lunch,
another drink after lunch.
America was awash in alcohol,
and we had our fair
share of alcoholics
in the CIA.
We were useful in the morning,
we went back to our desk,
slept for an hour to
get rid of the alcohol,
and then worked again
maybe two hours later.

There was a
family feeling at CIA.
It was very much smaller,
it was very much composed of
people of similar backgrounds,
similar beliefs,
similar ethics,
and you felt
absolutely at home.
[Bettina VO] I think
the experience of being,
you know, a refugee and a Jew,
it was very important
to him to assimilate.
In hearing him talk about the
people of those early days,
I get the feeling
they were, you know,
a very sort of
blue-blooded bunch --
you know, graduates of the top
universities in this country --
and I think he really...
liked the company of
those-- that type of person.
He was so young, but he was
old enough to kind of be an
independent person, and I think
he kind of treated it all like a
big adventure.
ominous music
[Stephen VO] With the
election of Eisenhower in 1952,
you had something that had never
happened before in American
history, and never
happened afterwards:
two siblings -- brothers --
controlling the overt
and the covert sides
of American foreign policy.
That was something new in
American and world history.
When Eisenhower
came in as President,
John Foster Dulles, he was
appointed Secretary of State,
and Allen Dulles, who had
been number-two man in CIA,
became the Director.
It was a prominent family.
Two members of the family
had been Secretary of State,
their father was a
presbyterian minister.
John Foster very early
developed a total hate
of the Communist system.
He believed they were evil
with a religious fervor,
because, besides
everything else,
John Foster was also
very prominent in the
International
Council of Churches.
So, it became a
mission in his life
to prevent Communist takeovers.
The more they played
up the propaganda of...
you know, "The Communists are
atheists and they're gonna take
away your Bibles [chuckles] and
they're gonna burn your churches
down," the more it sort of
fueled this kind of revival of
Christianity.
It's like, "They're the
godless, atheist Communists,
and here we are, the
good Christian people."
It was part of the
whole Red Scare thing.
Today,
into this
interdependent world,
has come a threatening force:
the force of
aggressive Communism.
It is cunning.
It is godless.
It aims to destroy all freedom,
and, most of all,
yours and mine,
because America is its
final and chief target.
Clearly, their goals
were American leadership
in a united world --
political,
ideological, ethical leadership.
This fit in with
Foster's religion ideas,
with Allen's just
pragmatic ideas.
Foster was...
virulently anti-Communist.
Allen was
operationally anti-Communist.
[Peter VO] Everybody in
the CIA hated John Foster
for two reasons:
number one, for his...
unsophisticated opposition
to Communism and Russia,
and number two, because,
during the McCarthy time,
he fired everybody in
the State Department
who was accused by McCarthy,
even if they had done nothing.
Even if there's only one
Communist in the State
Department, that would still
be one Communist too many!
And Allen never
fired one person
identified by McCarthy.
So, I spent quite a
lot of time with him,
and we became very good friends.
Allen...
was endlessly charming.
I mean, the man had charm;
you could eat it with a spoon.
And he was
charming to everybody.
He was not only
interested in intelligence,
but he was romantically
involved in loving it.
And it's bad when you
love intelligence,
and the art of spying,
and your
judgment is influenced
by that love.
soft pensive music
It had been a principle of
Western intelligence services to
separate the collection and
analysis of intelligence
from covert action.
Allen Dulles decided, as he was
helping to draft the law that
created the CIA, that he would
build an agency that did both.
He wanted to run an agency
that collected and analyzed
intelligence, and also
acted on intelligence.
That was something new in
the world of espionage,
and it gave the CIA
tremendous power.
[filmmaker] What was
your new job, specifically?
My new job specifically
was Head of Eastern Europe.
[Scott VO] He was kind of the
overseer of CIA operations,
sort of a coordinator.
The interesting thing about when
the Eisenhower Administration
came in is
he came to power saying that
we're gonna roll back --
we're gonna do a rollback of
the Soviet satellite states.
That's obviously much
more proactive than sort of
containment.
[Peter VO] "Rollback" means not
only being confrontational to
the Russians, but to try and
change the political makeup
in the border countries
-- like Czechoslovakia,
Poland --
and take them out
of the Soviet world,
and make them democracies.
That's what "Rollback" is:
get the Russians out.
Our nation must stand as a solid
rock in a storm-tossed world.
To all those who are suffering
under Communist slavery,
to the timid and
to the intimidated,
let us say this:
you can count upon us.

[Scott VO] The first operation
that I know of was into Albania,
where they were actually
airdropping and sneaking in on
boats at night
anti-Communist partisans
to use these men with the
ultimate hope that it might lead
to an internal insurrection.
And they lost dozens of men
in Albania by doing this --
probably even more in
Ukraine and even more in Poland.
Virtually every time, the KGB
knew exactly where these guys
were coming ashore.
Sometimes they'd let
them run for a week or two,
and then capture them.
[Peter VO] When I said to the
government it was impossible to
get an organized group to
so-call "conspire" against the
Russian
government, I was asked,
"What makes you so
smart to know this?"
and I said, "I'm not too smart,
but the Russians
have such a control,
as far as
security is concerned,
that it is impossible to
mount any real resistance
in their country."
And I turned out to be perfectly
correct because nobody who was
ever sent in
ever survived.
The amount of people that
lost their lives in Albania is
unbelievable.
I mean, the preoccupation
we had with Albania,
we thought this was going to be
the country we're going to turn
into a Western democracy --
a little country
of sheep's herds,
with nothing but mountains.

Collecting reliable intelligence
is difficult enough,
but people in high places
have an idea of
what it should be,
and if the
intelligence doesn't fit,
they don't believe
the intelligence.
Clearly, the covert
action program --
the Operation
Rollback program --
was a failure,
and John Foster Dulles,
one could argue, was the
last person to realize that.
Peter Sichel, along with a
lot of other CIA policy makers,
had realized that this method
of covert action that we've been
doing...
isn't working.
We've got to go back to square
one and think about it in a
different way.
[filmmaker VO]
Throughout your career,
a lot of intelligence
has been ignored,
and people were
sent into harm's way.
Aren't you frustrated?
You're even shocked.
Because it is a
waste of human beings.
It is extremely difficult
on your personal life,
and it leads to frustration,
and it leads to alcoholism,
or some other way of...
of...
making up for the loneliness.
pensive ethereal music
Living in a world where
your work can
never be discussed,
even with your wife...
where your contacts are largely
people who are doing the same
thing,
where your social contacts
are almost circumscribed by your
job...
did not give you
access to the real world.
[filmmaker VO] So
why did you stay?
It's very-- it's--
it's like being on a drug.
It is a fascinating game.
And if you feel that
that fascinating game
is important to your country,
it makes it doubly so.
Stalin died and we all
noticed it, obviously,
and we all hoped that
it would lead to a better
relationship between
the Russians and us.
But, basically, the
Russians don't change.
dramatic
suspenseful music
[man VO] Thousands of German
workers riot in the streets of
East Berlin, burning Soviet
flags and buildings in defiance
of their Red overlords.
A small-scale strike, which
began as a protest against an
order for more work, quickly
developed into an all-out
rebellion by more than
15,000 East Berliners.
A complete Russian
armored division moves in,
as martial law is declared.

During the workers'
uprising in Eastern Germany,
we did not anticipate it.
Once it started,
we had no idea it was
going to be as serious
as it ultimately
turned out to be.
[John Jr. VO] I know
that during those riots,
he was running around
trying to save people.
Now, I don't know
whether he was able to grab
agents and run
them to safehouses,
but I know that he did his best.
[filmmaker VO] Why
didn't the Americans go in?
[Scott VO] All of a sudden, they
realized they couldn't go in,
because if they go
into East Berlin --
if they go into Poland,
if they go into Hungary --
it could start a nuclear war.
So, what the perceived threat of
nuclear war essentially did was
freeze in place...
the "Iron Curtain," if you want
to call it -- the line drawn
through Europe.
What it simultaneously did --
the second thing it did --
was that it made the
entire rest of the world
a playground for
mischief-making.
[Stephen VO] The United States
adopted a narrative:
"There are two forces in the
world -- one run from Moscow,
the other run from Washington.
They are in mortal combat.
Everything that happens in the
world is a small piece of that
larger conflict."
Eisenhower had a defense
policy called the "New Look,"
and it had two legs.
One leg was a smaller army --
Eisenhower was a budget cutter
-- and the other leg
was nuclear deterrent.
That was the New Look.

What we didn't know
is that the New Look
actually had a third leg,
which was covert action.
When the CIA came
to him and said,
"We can overthrow governments
and change the directions of
entire nations
without ever sending
the American military,"
naturally, someone like
Eisenhower would have said,
"Tell me more."
This was their view:
Moscow has seized certain
countries -- the ones in Eastern
Europe -- but there are other
countries in the world that it
can't seize yet; they're
not yet ripe for takeover.
They looked around the world and
tried to find the countries that
they thought were
the most endangered,
and the first one they
fixated on was Iran.
pensive Middle
Eastern music
Mohammad Mosaddegh, the
nationalist leader in Iran,
was overthrown.
tense ambient music
Iran was seen as a
potential Cold War battleground,
and Allen Dulles had definitely
picked the Shah as our man,
so any person or movement that
threatened the Shah's position
became -- in Allen Dulles'
view -- an enemy of
the United States.

We were involved in
getting rid of Mosaddegh.
It was largely done because
Mosaddegh made very plain
that he would nationalize the
British-Iranian Oil Company.
So, the operation was
in order to maintain
the Western ownership and
interest in the oil production.
The Brits were involved, but
we were the action part of it.
[Stephen VO] The Dulles brothers
correctly saw this as a threat
to the position of big
corporations all over the world!
If Mosaddegh could get
away with this in Iran,
it could mean that countries
anywhere -- who controlled
resources that the US
wanted -- could say,
"We're nationalizing our
resources and we're gonna charge
whatever price we want!"
To prevent that -- and to give a
lesson to rising nationalists --
Mosaddegh was overthrown.
[filmmaker] Who sanctioned this?
The President.
suspenseful ominous music
I did not approve of removing
a government which had been
voted in by the population,
which did not...
present to us a national
security threat.
I thought it was not only
illegal but ill-advised.
'Cause had we not gotten
rid of Mosaddegh in Iran,
Iran today would
be a good member
of the family of nations --
a Socialist
Democratic country --
and that did not happen
because the Shah went back,
suppression took place,
dictatorship abused the public.
It then caused...
a revolution.
[commotion]
We don't think it through to the
end -- that an action we take
today may, in the long run,
be against our interests.
We indirectly caused
the arrival of the Mullahs.
tense ambient music
After Iran, they went directly
into the project to overthrow
the nationalist
government of Guatemala,
and that was President Arbenz.

[filmmaker VO] June 17th, 1954
-- why was the coup engineered?
United Fruit.

Guatemala was under a
dictatorship until 1944.
People were being employed
by the United Fruit Company
under terrible,
terrible circumstances.
Before my
grandfather came into power,
there was no code of labor.
They were being
treated as slaves.
It was cheap labor for
the United Fruit Company,
and that's why they were
so successful at bringing
cheap bananas to
the United States.
[Peter VO] He came in,
he gave the poor land,
he started a Socialist country,
and it would have ended
by taking the farms away
from United Fruit that dominated
the market down there,
and where Guatemala was a
large part of their wealth.
Bananas are a very important
economic factor.
[Erick VO] He knew right away
there would be trouble with the
agrarian reform,
so he went and
bought the land that was
not being used by the
United Fruit Company.
That's when the Dulles
brothers decided to call this
"a Communism."

[Peter VO] United Fruit was
able to convince Eisenhower
that we get rid of Arbenz.
[chop]
I knew about it because some of
the people who worked for me in
Berlin were involved in
the Arbenz operation.
It was extremely badly handled.
It was extremely
doubtful that it would succeed.
[Erick VO] My grandfather
continued to use diplomacy,
then to move to
the United Nations.
We had talked to governments
from several countries --
France, Britain.
We knew that they
were supporting us.
We knew Winston
Churchill was supporting us.
But, also, we knew that we were
up against something bigger.
The Dulles brothers
told Winston Churchill,
"You need to stay
in your backyard."

Doublethink is
part of statecraft.
Doublethink means that you...
enunciate a policy
of wanting to create
democracy worldwide,
and then, from a
realpolitikal point of view,
you realize that, unless some
of these dictatorships continue,
you are endangering
your own position.

The entire family had to leave
Guatemala under the threat of
death.

As soon as they got
into the airport,
my grandfather was
forced to undress
in front of the cameras.
The excuse was that maybe
he was hiding something.
That's how much of a threat
my grandfather was.
The CIA had picked up
already Castillo Armas
to be the replacement,
and all of a sudden,
the new dictator,
Armas, came in,
and completely
destroyed the Constitution,
dissolved Congress,
and repressed people
back into a dictatorship
after they had learned
what freedom was like.
The need for
vigilance is not past.
Communism is still a
menace everywhere,
but the people of the United
States and of the other American
republics
can feel that at least one
grave danger has been averted.
There was no basis to any
Communist conspiracy in
Guatemala.
It was neither
Communism in Guatemala,
nor in Iran.
It was Socialist.
It was countries
getting back their own,
after being
exploited almost colonially.
John Foster Dulles
was the guy who
spearheaded the
whole idea of...
you know, "We're gonna
roll back Communism."
And what is Communism?
In John Foster Dulles'
mind, it was anybody
who sort of opposed, you know,
American hegemony around the
world; it wasn't
about Communism anymore.
[Stephen VO] The Guatemala coup
firmly established the view that
the United States would not
tolerate any defiance in Central
America,
and it set off a horrific
civil war inside Guatemala
that lasted for
more than 30 years,
and took something
like 200,000 lives.
[Peter VO] We
destroyed, partially,
Guatemala.
It's a beautiful
country, beautiful people,
and we destroyed
it for a long time.
Unforgivable.
curious music
[typewriter]
[Peter VO] Though
I was American,
I also felt very
strongly my European origins.
I had opinions,
some of them based
on not necessarily
American prejudgments.
I was quite outspoken about it.
And it may have been that
that somebody accuse me of being
not...
really a patriotic American.
[filmmaker] Did he ever talk
about the FBI investigation of
-him?
-No.
Never.
[filmmaker] Had you
heard about it before?
No, never heard about it.
[laughs]
Sorry, I haven't!
I guess...yeah.
[filmmaker] If he was
a Communist or not?
No.
When?
[typewriter]
[Peter VO] We had a
colonel in Berlin,
who was collecting
intelligence in East Germany,
and we identified his sources
as having no access to
the targets he reported on.
This didn't happen once, it
happened a number of times.
And I finally told him
that he should drop it,
and we had a big fight.
He then accused me of being...
disloyal,
a Soviet agent,
and wrote a report to
Washington about me being a
danger to security,
and those reports were followed
up by the FBI investigating me.
I was questioned, my
friends were questioned,
they looked into it,
and I was cleared.
Now, to make the
story a little...
more fun, that particular
colonel was then sent as
military attach to Japan...
and I had been planned
as the CIA chief of Japan.
And when that happened, Dick
Helms called me in and said,
"Look, Peter,
you'd better not go to Japan.
You'd better go to Hong Kong."
[chuckles]
pensive orchestral music
Hong Kong was an
island in a Red sea,
so we couldn't go away for the
weekend unless we flew out of
Hong Kong.
We were limited to be
there all the time.
The social life was
extremely active.
There was a cocktail party or a
dinner party you could go to any
day of the week,
and there was an active
exchange of wives and husbands.
And everybody drank too much.
[Scott VO] He went,
I believe, in '56.
He was the CIA station
chief in Hong Kong and,
at that point, certainly, Hong
Kong would have been the Berlin
of that part of Asia.
soft pensive music
[Peter VO] China was
an important target,
but it was basically
not accessible to us
for espionage.
The US had no
relationship with China at all.
We didn't have a
diplomatic relationship,
we did not
recognize Communist China,
and we regarded it as
a unfriendly country.
There were no senior specialists
in Chinese in the CIA,
so they used people who
knew about Communism
and Communist
takeover of governments
to put in assignments like
Hong Kong.
Southeast Asia had
enormous natural resources,
and the Soviets were
competing with us for them.
And it was an area where
the colonial power left
and the societies were
not in a good shape
to form themselves
as nation states,
so it was possible
that they would rather
go for Communism
than a democratic solution.
[Stephen VO] Now, the leaders
of these emerging countries were
not interested in the Cold War.
In fact, they weren't
interested in foreign policy.
Their principal interest
was domestic development.
The United States insisted
that countries take sides.
As Foster Dulles put it:
"Our policy is global now.
Neutralism is immoral."
Neutrality meant
you were in danger of
falling to the Soviets.
Here is Indochina.
If Indochina falls, Thailand
is put in an almost impossible
position.
The same is true of Indonesia.
If this whole part of Southeast
Asia goes under Communist
domination or
Communist influence...
[Kartika VO] My father was the
first president of Indonesia.
He fought for independence to
fight against the Dutch colonial
rule.
[Peter VO] Sukarno was the
father of modern Indonesia.
He was also an autocrat,
and, at one stage,
it looked as if he was going
to be very sympathetic to the
Communists.
So, we were...
rather anxious to
know more about him.
[Kartika VO] His ambition was
really to unite the country.
[cheering]
People loved his speeches;
he had a standing ovation in
Washington DC when
he visited in 1956.
[man VO] America says "Welcome"
in a big way to President
Sukarno.
Vice President Nixon and State
Secretary Dulles are on hand at
Washington's National Airport.
Although newly independent,
Indonesia is neutralist.
[Stephen VO] He had
come to the United States;
he had been welcomed; he
addressed the joint session of
Congress!
[Sukarno VO] May God give us
-- America and Indonesia --
the best friendship
which has ever existed
between two nations.
[applause]
Then, after he went
home to Indonesia,
a few months later, he
went to visit China.
He saw this as neutralism!
We saw it as a stab in the back.
My father's foreign policy goals
was for Indonesia to be accepted
as as an independent
country who didn't have to take,
really, any sides -- whether it
was for the Americans or for the
Soviets -- and to keep their
resources for themselves.
Indonesia is by far the richest
country in natural resources;
they have copper,
rubber, oil, palm oil,
gold.
And he had nationalized many
American companies, yes.
I actually ran an
operation, personally,
through an American air hostess
who worked for Pan Am...
in the plane that
Sukarno had rented
with a crew.
And her only job was
to get Sukarno's...
caca,
because we had heard
that he was very sick,
and we wanted to find out
if this was true or not.
So, you imagine,
it wasn't easy to,
first, find the woman
willing to do that,
to convince her to do it,
to get that caca [chuckling]
to the right people,
and then we found
out he was perfectly all right.
We tried several other
things against Sukarno,
including trying to work
with a number of colonels
who...
conspired against him.
We sent a plane in in
order to supply them.
The plane was shot down,
the pilot admitted
that he worked for CIA,
and, ultimately,
we bought him out.
It was below the radar; nobody
ever found out about these
things.
[Kartika VO] I mean, of course,
there is the story of Alan Pope,
who was bombing civilians,
as well as trying to bomb the
military forces which
were loyal to my father.
His plane went down and his
parachute got caught on a tree,
and he was arrested by
the Indonesian Army,
and it was a huge embarrassment
because he was obviously an
American pilot
working for the CIA.
Alan Pope had made
the statement, actually,
that when he was
bombing the civilians in the
name of
eliminating Communism that,
actually, the civilians
probably did not even know what
"Communism" meant.
[Peter VO] Ultimately, it turned
out that Sukarno would not have
given the country
over to the Communists.
He was too much
of a nationalist.
And CIA...
had a lot of...
egg on its face.
The Americans fought, also,
for their freedom against a
colonialism from the British,
so they should have understood
better, yes.
Peter whistling
[filmmaker VO] How is it
that the CIA misjudged so many
situations?
And you -- why did you
misjudge the situation?
It's burnout and losing...
and losing reality.
You're living in a
world of mirrors,
and you...
after a while don't know what
is true and what is not true.
It is unhealthy
for anybody to spend more
than 15 years in the clandestine
service,
because you're no longer
able to think straight,
because you've lived in a
protected and different world
for so long
that you have no...
relationship anymore with
the society you live in,
and it's likely that
you're burned out
and really no longer creative.
soft ominous music
Allen Dulles went on an
extensive trip to visit CIA
stations in the Far East in I
believe it was probably '59.
He started in
Singapore and went to Malay,
went to Thailand,
went to Pakistan,
India, and then
came to Hong Kong.
And I arranged a dinner party
with the head of
government in Hong Kong,
and the Secretary, and
the head of MI5 and MI6,
and we discussed the situation
in Hong Kong and in Southeast
Asia.
[Scott VO] I think that there
was this idea that you might be
able to do kind of a
"rollback" against Mao,
because Richard Bissell
showed up and announced that,
now, the CIA was going to do the
same thing in Communist China
that they done and failed so
miserably at in Eastern Europe
-- this massive campaign of
sending anti-Communist partisans
across into China.
And Peter knew it was
going to be a disaster.
[Peter VO] The CIA sent
freedom fighters into China
to contact so-called
"resistance groups,"
and we knew that there was a
considerable amount of money
committed to that effort.
We had a conference of
station chiefs in Manila,
and, by that time, I knew quite
a bit about what they were doing
in China.
And I had a talk
with Dick Bissell,
and I said, "Look, Dick.
We sent people into Ukraine to
resistance groups that didn't
exist, and they
went to their death.
We sent people
in Albania to resistance
groups that didn't exist,
and they went to their death.
We're now doing the same thing
in China,
and I don't want to be
associated with a company that
is responsible
for the deaths of people because
they refuse to learn from their
own experience."
It was, for me, the...
the cutting-off point.
And it was that thing which
ultimately caused me to...
resign from the CIA.
[filmmaker] And what did he say?
He did not say anything.
He accepted it.
Period.
Mr. Bissell, it's a truism in
our society that moral ends
don't justify immoral means.
And yet, you and your
colleagues in the CIA must,
on many occasions, have had
to abandon that principle.
How do you deal with it?
[Richard] I think
the morality of,
shall we call it for
short, "the Cold War"
is so infinitely...
easier
than the morality of
almost any kind of a hot war
that I never encountered
this as a serious problem.
Did you apply, for example,
moral standards to what you did
when you were
director of the CIA?
Yes, I did!
Why?
Because I don't think --
given the caliber of the
men and women I had working
for me --
I didn't want to ask them to
do a thing that I wouldn't do.
One or two said that
even what I assigned them,
they preferred not to do, and
that was all right with me;
I didn't ask them to do it.
[Peter VO] Obviously, I
discussed it with Allen.
He was sorry to see me go,
and he was convinced I
was going to come back.
He could not envisage
anybody living without
being in the CIA.
I mean, these people served...
served a god, and the
god was intelligence.
tender orchestral music
When I left the
CIA, they gave me
the Distinguished
Intelligence Medal,
which is not given freely.
I was given a
luncheon by Allen Dulles.
My departure was
made easier and faster
because I disapproved of so
many things that were happening.
My own marriage was not...
[chuckles]
was on the rocks.
My first wife, though
extremely charming,
had a roving eye,
and the first time
we had a major crisis
was when she had an
affair in Washington
with a colleague
of mine in the CIA.
And in Hong Kong, she had an
affair with an Englishman
who ran the
classical music section
of Hong Kong radio.
We decided to separate for good.
When I finally
wanted to marry Stella,
my first wife decided
she wanted to come back
and see if we
couldn't get together again,
and, of course...
it was unrealistic.
[Peter VO] I took over a small
import company that tried to
sell Sichel German wines,
both in New York
and nationally.
And since we had a brand
-- which was easy to drink,
was slightly sweet, it would
go with almost any dish...
You want a really fine wine?
One you can drink
with any kind of food?
Blue Nun.
Blue Nun, sir.
It's exquisite.
[woman VO] Blue Nun,
an exquisite wine.
Honestly.
[Peter VO] At one point, we were
one of the biggest wine brands
worldwide.
[Peter VO] When I first joined
OSS, I was extremely
young, and extremely innocent.
I never went to college, and I
found the need to educate myself
by reading
history and philosophy.
And I became more conscious
and more responsive
to the effect of
action of certain types
to the larger world.
We've never been in a
foreign affairs situation
where we weren't
happy to have enemies.
Somehow, that competition
of facing an enemy
is in our nature.
We're dealing with
20th-century mindsets
that have not
thought of the future,
and how things can change
between nations.
We're not thinking of
the underlying
problems of poverty,
disease, overpopulation,
climate change,
which, today, are
much more important
than getting the upper
hand over somebody else.
soft curious music
[woman VO] Peter's life
has been so diversified,
it's really the stuff of movies.
We call him "the
Jewish James Bond."
Ladies and gentlemen, I
give you our beloved friend,
Peter Sichel.
[applause]
[filmmaker VO] Will
spying ever become obsolete?
No.
Spying will never
become obsolete.
People will always
want to find out
what the other
people are doing.
[man] How does
one leave the CIA?
[laughter]
You self-destruct.
[laughter]
[typewriter]

[filmmaker VO] Have you
told us all your secrets?
[Peter VO] They probably can
hang me for some of the things I
told you.
[laughs]
curious music