Flawed Patriot: The Rise and Fall of CIA Legend Bill Harvey (review)

Since the creation of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in 1947, few of its officers have become more famous—some would say notorious—than William K. Harvey. Despite a pear-shaped physique during most of his adult life, Harvey was often referred to as the James Bond of the CIA, probably because he did his best to foster an image of himself as a swashbuckling operative. The pearl-handled pistols he wore on each hip and a smaller caliber revolver tucked in his waistband, the steady flow of martinis he consumed, and the romantic escapades he claimed to have had (the seduction of a different woman every day of his adult life), were all part of a derring-do persona that he did his best to project.

Not all of it was a myth. He began his intelligence career at the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) on the eve of the Second World War and chalked up some successful counterespionage operations, first against the Germans and then after the war against the Soviet Union. By 1947, however, he had upset the FBI director, J. Edgar Hoover, one too many times. The first instance was when he approved an operation in New York against a German target without proper authority from Hoover, an early illustration of Harvey’s disdain for bureaucratic procedures that got in the way of quick action. The second instance—the straw that broke the camel’s back—arose when Harvey had an automobile mishap. He slid off the road in Washington, DC on a rainy night after too much drinking at a party. He fell asleep in the car on the side of the road, and when his wife reported him missing late at night, the news made its way to the FBI’s top floor. Within a month, Harvey was gone from the bureau, despite mostly high marks on his efficiency ratings.

Without missing a beat, Harvey found employment at the newly established CIA, where he made his disdain for the FBI widely known, thus provoking Hoover’s unwavering enmity. Inside the agency (as the CIA is called by its officers), Harvey drew mixed reviews, just as he had at the FBI. Colleagues ridiculed his efforts at machismo, as when he flipped the lid of his Zippo lighter in the style of a film noir detective, spun the cylinder of his pistol, or cleaned his fingernails with a hunting knife. He seemed to enjoy trying to shock the CIA’s cultured Ivy Leaguers with his Midwestern rough edges—espionage’s answer to Ernest Hemingway.

Yet he also had a knack (again, as at the FBI) for placing himself in the middle of important CIA operations and, at least in these early years, drew praise from colleagues and superiors. During his early years at the agency, Harvey had an intuitive suspicion of the British intelligence officer Harold A. R. “Kim” Philby, based temporarily in Washington, DC as a liaison between the CIA and its British counterpart, MI-6. Harvey sent warnings to the agency’s managers; but, charmed by Philby’s amiability and sophisticated Cambridge style, they initially ignored the red flags. As the circumstantial evidence of Philby’s treachery mounted, however, the CIA’s highest officials began to take Harvey’s reservations more seriously. When the British double-agent was finally exposed, Harvey’s reputation inside the agency took a leap upward.

Harvey’s reputation surged again in the 1950s when he led a CIA effort to wiretap Soviet military communications that passed through Berlin. The agency dug a tunnel to gain access to the transmission lines, a difficult feat at the time. The collection operation, even though compromised from the beginning by the presence of another British agent who was spying for the Soviet Union, George Blake, was able to gather useful information because Soviet intelligence officials wanted to keep Blake’s cover intact and therefore let the tunnel project proceed. However, the Soviet...