WASHINGTON –
Editor’s note: The
Faces of Defense Intelligence series is intended to highlight the
accomplishments of former military and civilian intelligence personnel who
exemplified the Defense Intelligence Agency creed Excellence in Defense of the
Nation. DIA would like to thank the Military Intelligence Corps
Hall of Fame at the US Army Intelligence Center of Excellence, Fort Huachuca,
for providing research materials on Lt. Gen. Alva Fitch that made this article
feasible. For further information on the Military Intelligence Corps Hall of Fame
please visit their website.
During a
lifetime demonstrating the hallmarks of a servant leader, Lt. Gen. Alva Fitch
became the first Eagle Scout in the state of Nebraska, won the Distinguished
Service Cross, Silver Star, Bronze Star, Legion of Merit, Purple Heart, Grand
Officier de L’Ordre Grand-Ducal de la Couronne de Chene of Luxembourg, Orden de
Vasco Nunez de Balboa of Panama, and was a distinguished member and selectee to
the first Military Intelligence Corps Hall of Fame class. A 1930 graduate of
the United States Military Academy, Fitch attended and taught at the Command
and Staff General College, and completed instruction at both the Army War College
and Strategic Intelligence School. He survived capture by the Japanese in the
Philippines and the rigors of the Bataan Death March, the sinking of two
Japanese prisoner-of-war ships while a passenger, and was one of 350 survivors
of 1,619 men at his prisoner-of-war camp; following World War II, he spent
nearly two years on medical leave recovering from issues arising from his time as
a prisoner-of-war. A commander of Elvis Presley and Colin Powell, he also
served as an aide-de-camp to Maj. Gen. Leslie McNair and regularly worked
alongside numerous historical figures such as Gen. Curtis LeMay, Secretary of
Defense Robert McNamara and President Eisenhower. He also participated, as a
soldier and senior leader, in some of the most trying and momentous periods in
U.S. history.
At his
memorial service in 1989, it was noted that, “He played the hand he had been
dealt with style. There was never any doubt that his job and the men came
first.” Lt. Gen. Alva Fitch embodied
excellence in defense of the nation.
Fitch began
his intelligence career after attending the Strategic Intelligence School
before serving as the military attaché and ambassador to El Salvador in 1948. After
a fellow attaché was discharged from his position in Guatemala, Fitch took over
most military duties for Central America. Although a short rotation, he
represented the U.S. through revolutions and attempted coups in several
countries. Following his attaché service, he worked as the Chief of the Latin
American Section of the Department of the Army Intelligence (G2) prior to the
Korean War. Upon the outbreak of the war, Fitch deployed to Korea as the executive
officer of the IX Corps artillery and took part in the Battles of White Horse
Mountain, Triangle Hill and 1953 Chinese offensive.
After tours
in Korea and Europe, Fitch established his mark on intelligence when filling
the positions of deputy and assistant chief of staff, intelligence (ACSI), for
the Army from 1959 through January 1964. During this time, Fitch managed Army
intelligence requirements and collection activities through a critical period
of the Cold War, which included the Bay of Pigs Invasion, Cuban Missile Crisis,
Checkpoint Charlie flare-up, construction of the Berlin Wall and the escalating
conflict in Vietnam. Fitch emphasized the need for additional aerial
collection, increasing the Army’s airborne collection assets, realigned human
intelligence resources to address the loss of refugee-related intelligence
collected upon construction of the Berlin Wall, and merged intelligence and
counterintelligence field operations to exploit collection opportunities.
Fitch had
long complained the Army had no career intelligence field and was staffed
predominantly by reservists or individuals on rotation from other fields, which
meant the Army consistently lost its most experienced and capable officers just
when they were most able to contribute. As the ACSI in 1961, he finally had the
seniority to establish the Intelligence and Security Branch under General Order
38, which, for the first time in U.S. history, established intelligence as a
military career field. Fitch’s effort led to the creation of recruitment
standards and professionalization of intelligence, yielding better collection,
analysis and warfighter support.
“[I]ntelligence
went from being the Army's orphaned stepchild to becoming a branch of
considerable importance,” Fitch said during a 1984 interview. “And, it is a
branch that commands a good quality of officer. When the Intelligence Branch
was new, I was invited up to West Point to explain it to the first or senior
class. The first class is the one that would graduate that year. And, I did a
good job. In fact, I did too good of a job; they would never let me come back.
But, that year the intelligence vacancies were the first ones filled by the
first classmen. The first man in the class gets his choice of branch and then
so on, down the line, with the seniors filling vacancies as they go. This was a
blow to the Engineer Corps which in the past had always been filled first.
We've got good men in the Intelligence Branch, now.”
Fitch
transformed Army intelligence and, despite some opposition, made his initial
mark on the creation of DIA. When holding the deputy ASCI position, the vice chief
of staff of the Army tasked Fitch to write a paper for the Joint Chiefs of Staff
to establish an agency intended to consolidate many of the roles spread across
the service, to provide a unified Department of Defense (DoD) position and
contact, and increase information sharing.
“The paper
got to the Joint Staff and I was called up to defend it, and I defended it,”
Fitch said. “Curtis LeMay was vice chief of air staff at that time; he may have
been the chief, I have forgotten now which he was. Anyhow, he wholeheartedly
bought my story. He said, ‘That's great. Why are we troubled with this?’ His
staff got ahold of him afterwards and made him eat his words. They took my
paper, but they modified it to give collection and evaluation to DIA.”
At the
completion of his time as the ACSI, Fitch was slated to move to CIA as the
chief military liaison, but McNamara thought such a respected officer should
stay in the DoD, so Fitch was assigned to be the second DIA deputy director beginning
in January 1964. During his time at DIA, China tested its first three atomic
weapons, the U.S. invaded the Dominican Republic, India and Pakistan fought a
major conflict, and the U.S. commitment in Vietnam multiplied following the
Gulf of Tonkin incident. In some cases, such as the threat in Vietnam, Fitch
and his representation of DIA analysis in this period was instrumental in decision-making
at the national level.
“By the spring of 1964, it had reached the point that the
only way you could go from one city to another was by air,” Fitch said. “John
McCone was director of the CIA at the time, and I was the deputy director of DIA
and the acting director, since the director was off in Asia someplace. We
looked at the Vietnam situation in some detail. We decided that the situation
was a lot worse than was generally recognized…We formally estimated that unless
something was done, it was only a matter of weeks until our position would
become untenable. Well, this hit the Joint Chiefs of Staff just like turning a fire
hose on them. They called me in and worked me over. ‘Look at this body count.
Look at all the weapons we've been capturing,’ I said. ‘And look how you go
from one place to another. How much of the land do you control? How much of a
perimeter around these cities have you got? How much food do you get into the
cities without paying a tax to the Viet Cong?’ They kept me up there in the
"tank" for two days, grilling me on this estimate before they finally
accepted it. I think that led to a great expansion of our forces in Vietnam.
Maybe it would have been better if we just had gotten the hell out at the time,
just write it off. But, there's no way you could do that as far as I could see.”
As the deputy
director, Fitch also assisted in the development of DIA, often hindered by those
who objected to its formation. With fewer than 3,000 employees, the agency was
inundated with expanding intelligence requirements and missions. In April 1964,
DIA assumed joint management with the National Security Agency for the DoD
Special Missile and Astronautics Center (later known as DEFSMAC) to collect and
disseminate intelligence on space and missile activities. Then, in March 1965,
DIA took over responsibility for the Defense Attaché System, consolidating the
activities from the military services and designed to provide an efficient
system for collection of information and improved sharing. DIA also, to address
an analytic shortfall, established the Technical Intelligence Directorate, and
formed a joint DIA-CIA working group to address the threat of Soviet military
forces. Fitch proved instrumental in transitioning DIA from a fledgling intelligence
organization to a national-level agency committed to Excellence in Defense of
the Nation.
Sources
Cullum No. 8879 . Nov 25, 1989. "Memorial for LTG
Alva R. Fitch". Interred in Arlington National Cemetery, Arlington, VA.
Finnigan,
John Patrick and Romana Danysh, Army
Lineage Series: Military Intelligence.
Center of Military History, United States Army. Washington, DC. 1988.
588 pages.
“Military
Intelligence Corps Hall of Fame Biography: Lieutenant General Alva R. Fitch, US
Army (Deceased).” https://www.ikn.army.mil/apps/MIHOF/Home
Petersen,
Michael B. The Vietnam Cauldron: Defense
Intelligence in the War for Southeast Asia.
Defense Intelligence Historical Perspectives, Number 2. Defense
Intelligence Agency: Washington, DC. 2012.
60 pages.
PROJECT 84-7
Volume I: ALVA R. FITCH, Lieutenant General, USA Retired. Interviewed by Harold
R. Kough, Lieutenant Colonel, USA 1984. 145 pages.
PROJECT 84-7
Volume II: ALVA R. FITCH, Lieutenant General, USA Retired. Interviewed by
Harold R. Kough, Lieutenant Colonel, USA 1984. 188 pages.