Power and Subterfuge in the Time of the Bomb : Producer of PBS Documentary: The Man Who Reveals the Secrets

Blaine Baggett stares at the plain, chocolate-brown telephone on his desk at public television station KCET on Sunset Boulevard, then, with a trace of anxiety, glances out the window toward nearby hills.

As executive producer of “Secret Intelligence,” a four-part documentary airing nationally on PBS on four consecutive Mondays beginning tonight at 9, Baggett is talking about the making of the series, which tracks America’s multibillion dollar international espionage empire from World War II’s Office of Strategic Services all the way to Marine Lt. Col. Oliver North and Iran-Contra.

Narrated by former “CBS Morning News” anchor Bill Kurtis, “Secret Intelligence” explores the role of the FBI, the CIA and the lesser known--but perhaps even more powerful-- National Security Agency, home of “America’s modern code-breaking effort and other eavesdropping systems. . . . “

A quiet, unassuming man of medium height, build and coloring who could easily blend into a crowd, Baggett is also talking about ever-maturing, high-tech laser-beam listening devices, which figure in Program Four.

He hints they may eventually pose an even greater threat to individual liberties than anything that’s happened thus far--from the Palmer Raids and other Red scares, through Watergate, Vietnam and North’s self-described “off-the-shelf, self-sustaining, stand-alone entity” operating out of the basement of the White House.

“For instance, we could be having a phone conversation here,” Baggett begins quietly. “There doesn’t have to be a tap on that phone. They (the listeners) could turn that telephone receiver to an open mike somewhere across the street.” He pauses, then adds with a slight smile: “And maybe they have-- whoever they are. . . . Not that I feel particularly persecuted, but they certainly know who I am.”

With a trace of Mississippi still in his voice, the 38-year-old Baggett--a former Peace Corps volunteer in West Africa (1973-74) and PBS’ creative director for national advertising and video promotion (1976-82)--speaks so softly that a listener strains to catch swallowed words that have a tendency to drop off the edge of his sentences.

The series, produced by KCET, looks at the nation’s intelligence apparatus from the vantage point of the “constant tension between secrecy and democracy,” the conflict between national security and the public’s right to know, on matters ranging from domestic surveillance to foreign assassination plots.

“So, where do I come down (between security and democracy)? I think the vast majority of these people are trying to do a very important function,” Baggett notes. “But it only takes a very few gung-ho types to threaten our entire constitutional process, and I’m scared to death of it. And I think the only way we’re ever going to remain as a democracy welded to truth is because we have strident congressional oversight. That’s why we begin and end the series with, ‘Who will watch the watchers?’ ”

For Baggett, the idea for “Secret Intelligence” began on Sept. 1, 1983 after the shooting down of a Korean civilian airliner by a Soviet interceptor jet.

At that point, Baggett was an independent producer in Washington, working on “Spaceflight,” which became an award-winning, four-part series for PBS on the history of America’s space program. One of his sources for the series was a science attache at the Soviet Embassy.

“When the KAL airliner was shot down, I began getting calls from the FBI wanting to know what was the nature of my contact with the Soviet Union,” Baggett explained. “And I had two really contradictory reactions: Personally, I felt very threatened that my privacy had been invaded, and I was going about doing quite law-abiding work as a journalist. But secondly, I was happy our government was on top of things. . . . “

Yet later, a Freedom of Information Act request by Baggett showed no evidence of the FBI’s inquiry.

Having always been “particularly fascinated by American institutions, understanding them and how they evolve,” he got a small research grant from PBS. He said he wondered, “Can a series like this even be done? Will anyone talk about it? Is there enough information available? I found not only that it could be done, but that it was such an extraordinary story and that it had never been told before. . . . “

Not, at least, on TV.

“So many people were willing to talk to me on at least those things that were already public that I knew that at the very least I could make an oral history,” Baggett said. “And the way we got around the lack of footage (was that) these agencies had influenced events and those events are certainly documented . . . .”

A long shelf in Baggett’s office spills over with books about the FBI, the Central Intelligence Agency and such, and he points out that at least four or five shelves could accommodate just the important books--not to mention the multi-volume report put out in 1976 by the Senate Select Intelligence Committee, headed by Sen. Frank Church, after its investigation of the CIA.

Now, Baggett, with Ernest Volkman (“Warriors of the Night: Spies, Soldiers and American Intelligence”) have added to the library with their book “Secret Intelligence: The Inside Story of America’s Espionage Empire,” published by Doubleday.

In October, 1985, KCET hired Baggett as its director of national public affairs to produce documentaries. One of the reasons he took the job, he said, was that station executives “embraced the (‘Secret Intelligence’) idea. Quite frankly, I had spoken as an independent to some other (public television) stations who had shied away from the idea of doing this because they thought it would be controversial,” added Baggett, declining to name them.

Some months later, having received “serious money” of about $100,000 from PBS, Baggett hired Kurtis and they prepared a 10-minute demonstration tape.

On it was part of a September, 1986, interview with the late William Casey--CIA director under President Reagan--talking about his OSS days. There were also excerpts from interviews with former embattled CIA directors Richard Helms (1966-73) and William Colby (1973-75).

Casey gave the interview two months before the first news reports of arms sales to Iran broke. The tape helped Baggett win financial backing from public TV’s important “station program cooperative”--the mechanism through which public TV stations pool money and fund major program series and individual projects.

Altogether, with $300,000 each from the station cooperative, from PBS and the Corp. for Public Broadcasting, the independent federal agency that helps fund public television, Baggett and his crew were on their way. At the end, United Airlines contributed to the $1.2 million series.

As Kurtis recalled, their “demo” was competitive with another tape on essentially the same topic from WETA, the public television station in Washington, narrated by Daniel Schorr. “So there was a little tension in the hall because (the station representatives) had seen the other presentation, and WETA could claim they are the hometown group. . . . We dressed Blaine up in a raincoat so he could look like an undercover man.”

“This was a dream project for me,” added Kurtis, who narrated from sites that included the memorial at Pearl Harbor, the Berlin Wall and the Bay of Pigs, where he can be seen climbing over old, rusting American military hardware. “It’s fascinating to walk back through history. In four hours you can literally tell the history of one of the most important communities in the U.S. government. Countless books have treated the subject, and all contribute to the mosaic of history, but seeing how (secret intelligence) developed, seeing it on TV, is like living it for the first time.”

George Bush, who was named CIA director in November, 1975, in the wake of Watergate, and who served until the inauguration of President Jimmy Carter in January, 1977, declined to appear on “Secret Intelligence.” He was, Baggett noted affably, “running for national office, and he wasn’t interested at all.”

Still, Baggett’s crew did get to interview six former CIA directors beginning with John J. McCone, who served in the Kennedy Administration.

E. Howard Hunt, while refusing to talk about the Watergate break-in, did talk freely about “the thrills and chills” of CIA work. And there is David Atlee Phillips, a former CIA station chief in Central America, expressing regret shortly before his death last summer about CIA actions in overturning a democratically elected government in Guatemala during the early years of the Eisenhower Administration.

Baggett maintains that “Secret Intelligence” breaks new ground, at least in electronic journalism, with its reports in the fourth program on the Pentagon’s “Special Operations Division” and, as he noted at a PBS-sponsored press conference recently, “most people don’t realize we had (advance) information about the bombing of the Marine barracks in Lebanon.”

“In four hours of an historical perspective,” noted Kurtis, “you see us repeating the same mistakes. The intelligence is there. . . . Pearl Harbor--we had three chances to know that the attack was imminent. The Beirut barracks--we had the intelligence two days (before) that there would be an attack. . . . “

As for the future, both Baggett and Kurtis are encouraged because of President Bush’s secret-intelligence experience.

“I think he’ll be a better President from having been in the CIA because he’ll understand it, and know how to use it,” Baggett said. “I think he’ll be a better President, assuming nothing else comes out of his involvement, alleged or potentially alleged, in Iran-Contra.”

Bush won’t be “intimidated” or “buffaloed” by all the technology and intelligence information, noted Kurtis. “He, certainly, better than anyone, should have learned a lesson about not abusing power, that you can’t allow agencies to operate totally in secret without the temptation to abuse that power.”