Garland H. Williams

Garland H. Williams (1903–1993) was an American pioneer of covert investigations, military counterintelligence, white collar investigations, espionage, training and planning, and a lifelong law enforcement officer. He is a veteran of World War II and the Korean War. During World War II, Williams was integral in the training of thousands of American hopeful would-be undercover operatives and guerrilla fighters in both the Military Intelligence Division and the Office of Strategic Services.

Early life Williams graduated from the University of Mississippi with a degree in engineering.

Career as a Government agent

Federal Agent (1929 to 1941) alt=old leather wallet unfolded, dusty from sitting in a museum. Inside the fold is the badge of the Federal Bureau Of Narcotics In 1929, Williams became an agent in the Bureau of Customs. However, a new opportunity took shape for Williams only one year later. In 1930, Williams was one of the first agents to join the newly established Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN), a predecessor agency of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), where he became a life-long devotee.

While at the Bureau of Narcotics, Williams worked with men like "Charlie Cigars" and George Hunter White under the famous FBN Commissioner Harry J. Anslinger to take down massive criminal networks. and became the first Commandant of the CIP Investigators Training School in Washington DC, located in a single room at the Army War College at Fort McNair.

The recruits that Williams taught here were between 22 and 33, had at least a high school diploma, had completed basic military training, and usually were affiliated with law enforcement in some form.

Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents also occasionally helped instruct the new school on its methods of investigation, due to its intentional proximity to the FBI Headquarters.

In January 1942, Williams was one of a dozen COI men of the Special Operations Branch to attend training at a British Special Operations Executive training camp outside of Toronto, Canada, called Camp X. There, he learned the British methods of sabotage, reconnaissance, guerrilla warfare, underwater and amphibious assault, trailing suspects, and managing networks.

In April 1942, Goodfellow and his staff, including Williams, began planning for and recruiting guerrilla fighters into COI. Wherever Williams went, he was never far away from a telegraph or an envelope to send to Anslinger. ONI and OSS during the war had also used Luciano as an asset to ensure protection of American forces by the Italian criminal underworld as they invaded the country and advanced northward against the Germans.

Lucky Luciano had still been running his mob from behind bars, but the US granted him reduced sentence in 1945 for "wartime services to the country." Williams created an ad hoc section called GE-1 in the 1173 rd for "military intelligence personnel interested in Psychological Warfare." While working under the direction of the Central Intelligence Agency and General MacArthur, Williams and other CIA field men allegedly issued orders to their soldiers to "prove victory by turning in the enemy's ear."

One of the men that Williams worked with in the field was named Anthony Poshepny, who became the prototype for Lt. Kurtz in Apocalypse Now, a rogue CIA agent who embraced the dark side. It is however accurate that Williams was setting up an FBN network in Iran at around the same time that Mosidueq was overthrown and the Shah was reinstalled.