Haviland Smith

Haviland Smith (August 25, 1929 – June 20, 2024) was an American CIA official.

As a station chief he worked in Prague, Berlin, Langley, Beirut, and Tehran, primarily on issues related to the Soviet Union. He also served as chief of the counterterrorism staff at the CIA, where he kept tabs on the Red Army Faction and Red Brigades, and as executive assistant to the Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency Frank Carlucci.

Early life and education Smith was born in Manhattan, New York City to Charlotte Adams and Haviland Smith in 1929 but grew up in Ridgewood, New Jersey. Smith attended the Phillips Exeter Academy graduating in 1947 and thereafter attended Dartmouth College until 1951 where he studied English and Russian. After army service in Europe, he studied a graduate program in Russian at the University of London. 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.

Special techniques He was the creator of espionage techniques used by the CIA during the Cold War in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, including the brush contact, a means by which an intelligence officer and his agent exchanged items in public places and the creation and manipulation of the gap, a small period of time where the intelligence officer or his agent were not under enemy surveillance.