TAMPA —
As a scientific intelligence officer for the Central Intelligence Agency, Gene Poteat specialized in radar technology.
He could make fake aircraft appear on Soviet radar screens.
In 1964, he analyzed radar images from the Gulf of Tonkin and tried unsuccessfully to dissuade the White House from escalating the war in Vietnam.
Now 83, Poteat is retired from the agency. But he still plays a role in the shadow world of intelligence as president of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers — current and former spies who educate the public on the importance of things that happen in secret.
During a visit to Tampa on Monday to speak to the organization’s second-largest chapter, Poteat said what he sees on his radar screen now is both encouraging and worrisome.
The intelligence community, said Poteat, “is in better shape than it’s ever been. It’s more robust than ever.”
Its capabilities have been enhanced, he said, by working closely with U.S. Special Operations Command.
“The Abbottabad operation, with the special operations forces, is an example of how effective it is today,” he said, referring to the raid that killed Osama bin Laden at his compound in Pakistan.
“The analysis that went on to back up that operation was beyond belief. Because they were working hand-in-glove, cheek-to-jowl, with other people involved in that, it was incredibly effective.”
This also is the source of Poteat’s concern, which he talked about in an interview after his speech at MacDill Air Force Base.
With the White House and Congress wrangling over debt, the military cutting back and special operations forces poised to take the lead in Afghanistan, he worries the intelligence community might also shrink, as well.
“It will be increasingly difficult” to provide the human, signal and other forms of intelligence that special operations forces rely on, said Poteat.
“We cannot afford to cut back on intelligence,” he said. “They are on the front lines. So are special forces.”
Poteat said his biggest frustration will be an across-the-board cut should Congress and the White House fail to come to an agreement on the national debt.
“You can’t keep the job up” under cuts that would be imposed by sequestration. “Let me add, there is a way to cut back without cutting out capability.
“There is so much fat in the Department of Defense budget, cut that out first.”
One example is the effort to replace the KC-135 aerial refueling tankers, 16 of which are at MacDill.
Those efforts began two decades ago, he said, but problems and scandal with the procurement process set the program back years.
“It was 20 years wasted and in my estimate, it cost a billion dollars before we got the first plane.”
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Tampa has a long history of intelligence operations, Poteat said.
During his speech to men and women who made their livings in the clandestine services, he talked about one of the nation’s youngest counter-intelligence operatives.
It was during the Spanish-American War. As American forces were preparing to invade Cuba from Tampa, there was concern about spies in the immigrant world of Ybor City.
“Teddy Roosevelt and his Rough Riders wanted to keep the date of their invasion of Cuba a secret,” Poteat said.
“Roosevelt was concerned that there might be Cubans or Spanish in Tampa who would learn the date of the invasion, and that would be a problem for him.”
A colonel in charge of the invasion force went to the post master of Ybor City and asked if he knew anyone who could tell if there were new strangers in town with Cuban or Spanish ties.
“The post master, Mr. Beane, said that ‘the only person who knew everyone in Ybor City is my 16-year-old daughter, Mabel.’ She was basically hired as a counter-intelligence agent in Tampa.
“She got on her bicycle, made the rounds. She spoke Spanish and knew everyone.
“She reported back to American authorities that there were no obvious strangers or spies in town.”
Mabel Beane, said Poteat, “was very popular after that.”
Officers threw dances in the luxurious Tampa Hotel, now historic Plant Hall at the University of Tampa.
“She was the belle of the ball.”
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Poteat’s own role in history is also little known.
During the early 1960s, lured away from the space program by the CIA, he became known for “spoofing” Soviet radar — making things appear on their screens that did not exist. So when a Navy destroyer crew reported it came under attack in the Gulf of Tonkin in 1964, Poteat was asked to review radar and sonar.
He set out to gather information about sea condition and weather, knowing both would play havoc with radar and sonar systems. But before he could get it, he picked up the Washington Post the next morning and was surprised at the headline.
“The president ordered expanding the war and we were bombing Hanoi,” he recalled.
Soon, Poteat obtained the weather information. The destroyer crew was indeed acting on false radar and sonar responses and did not come under attack.
“I went rushing up to my boss, CIA director John McCone, and said, ‘There were no torpedo boats. Mr. McCone, a wonderful man, said to me, ‘Son, you don’t understand. The president doesn’t have to listen to anything we’ve got to say. He is running the war, not me and you.’ ”