Former CIA officer to speak on clandestine intelligence at Baker Institute Oct. 26

FROM RICE NEWS STAFF REPORTS

Haviland Smith spent most of the Cold War recruiting and handling CIA agents to gather information on the Soviet Union. Now he is turning his attention to the Middle East.

	HAVILAND SMITH

Smith, a retired CIA station chief, will speak Oct. 26 at the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy on “Challenges for Clandestine Intelligence Collection in Support of U.S. Middle East Policy.”

Edward Djerejian, founding director of the Baker Institute, will deliver welcoming remarks.

Smith joined the CIA as a staff officer and subsequently served in numerous leadership posts: station chief in Prague; branch and group chief in Langley, Va.; deputy station chief in Tehran, Iran; and station chief in Washington, D.C. During that 25-year period, he worked primarily in Soviet and East European operations. His only ventures outside the Soviet operations arena were as chief of the counterterrorism staff and as executive assistant to the deputy director of Central Intelligence.

Smith worked closely with the FBI in joint Soviet operations beginning in l964 and again in the 1970s. During his headquarters tour in the 1970s, he lectured extensively to FBI training courses at Quantico and to FBI field offices, as well as to U.S. military intelligence organizations, initially on CIA recruitment operations against Soviets and later on counterterrorist operations.

Smith was educated at Phillips Exeter Academy, Dartmouth College and the University of London. He was inducted into the U.S. Army in 1951 and served three years in the Army Security Agency. He attended the Army Language School in Monterey, Calif., where he studied Russian. After the Army, he spent two years in a Ph.D. program in Russian regional studies at London.

Since his retirement in 1980, Smith has lived in Vermont.

The event will begin at 6 p.m. in Baker Hall’s Doré Commons.

Rice faculty, staff and students who want to attend must RSVP by e-mail (bipprsvp@rice.edu), by fax (713-348-5993) or on the Web at http://bit.ly/3QaEI6.