The CIA's Tibet program reviewed for the Special Group (January 1964)

By the end of 1963 the CIA's Tibet program, begun in the late 1950s, had changed character. The great revolt of 1959 was over, the Dalai Lama was in exile in India, and what remained was a guerrilla force on the Nepal–Tibet border and a growing political effort among the exiles. On 13 December 1963 the Special Group, the White House committee that reviewed covert operations, approved its continuation. This paper, dated 9 January 1964, answered the next question: what was the money for¹. The operation is described on this site as ST CIRCUS.

What it says

The summary defines the program as political action, propaganda and paramilitary activity, with a modest purpose: to keep the idea of an autonomous Tibet alive and to build a capacity for resistance "against possible political developments" in China¹. The background section recalls the force of about 2,000 men on the Nepal border, 800 of them armed by an airdrop in January 1961, and lists what had been added in 1963: training in the United States for 133 Tibetans, continued subsidy to the Dalai Lama's household at Dharmsala, continued support to the guerrillas in Nepal, and the move of some unarmed guerrillas to India for further training¹.

Plans for 1964 included some 20 single resident agents inside Tibet, two road-watch teams to report Chinese build-ups, and six border-watch radio teams. To meet the exiles' shortage of trained administrators the CIA would educate 20 young Tibetan officials, with Cornell University tentatively agreeing to host them under a committee of prominent Americans. Tibet Houses in New York, Geneva and a third city withheld in the printed text would act as unofficial missions for the Dalai Lama¹.

The paper's heart is a budget for fiscal 1964 totaling $1,735,000. The largest items are $500,000 for 2,100 guerrillas based in Nepal, $400,000 for the "covert training site in Colorado," $185,000 for "black" flights carrying trainees from Colorado to India, and $180,000 as a subsidy to the Dalai Lama¹. The training site is not named; other accounts identify it as Camp Hale, near Leadville⁴. The CIA expected costs not to rise and recommended that the program continue¹.

What happened next

The source note in Foreign Relations records that the Special Group discussed the paper on 13 February and approved it on 20 February 1964¹. A 1968 status report to the 303 Committee, the Special Group's successor, was gloomier: no radio teams were left inside Tibet, the singleton agent network had not developed, and Chinese control was "as pervasive as ever"². In January 1971 the CIA told the 40 Committee that the non-guerrilla budget had been cut from over $500,000 a year to $363,000³.

How to read it

The memorandum is an agency's case to its overseers for money, and it describes plans more than results. It was printed in 1998 from the State Department's Special Group files, with more than a dozen deletions, several of them a line or more long; the withheld passages appear to concern the program's foreign partners and bases¹.