Haviland Smith is a retired CIA station chief who worked in Prague, Berlin, Langley, Beirut, and Tehran, primarily on issues related to the Soviet Union. He also served as chief of the counterrorism staff and as executive assistant to the Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency Frank Carlucci. He is a graduate of Exeter, Dartmouth College, and the University of London. He served in the U.S. Army at the United States Army Security Agency before joining the CIA.
Smith was stationed in Beirut, Lebanon during the 1967 Six-Day War. After the Israeli Defense Forces attacked the USS Liberty, U.S. Ambassador to Lebanon Dwight J. Porter revealed that he had listened to radio transcripts that showed the Israelis knew they were attacking an American ship.[1] Smith said that although he never saw the transcripts, he had “heard on a number of occasions exactly the story that you just told me about what that transcript contained. [I was later told] that ultimately all of the transcripts were deep-sixed. I was told that they were deep-sixed because the administration did not wish to embarrass the Israelis.”[2][3]
He was the creator of espionage techniques used by the CIA during the Cold War in the Soviet Union and East Europe, including the brush contact and the creation and manipulation of the "gap".
Since his retirement, he has contributed Op-eds to local New England papers as well as The Boston Globe, the Hartford Courant, The Baltimore Sun and The Washington Post. He has also written regularly for Nieman Watchdog and American Diplomacy and has lectured around the Eastern U.S. on Russia, the Soviet Union, the Middle East, Terrorism and the intelligence process.