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On 13 August 1978 <em>Peer de Silva </em>died of a heart attack at his home in Great Falls, Virginia. Surviving him are his wife, Marilyn, his sons, Peer, Paul, and Michael; his daughters, Catherine, Sharon, and Robin. Grieving with them are a host of personal and professional intimates who shall miss his wit, charm, perception, and remarkable versatility.</p>
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Even in a Class that produced an unusual number of widely acclaimed and recognized individuals ranging from the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs to chairman of international corporations, Peer remains a standout by his personal and professional accomplishments. In fact only by offering flashbacks of those who were close to Peer during the several stages of his career can we gain an appreciation of what he came to mean to his friend; and to his country.</p>
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On older brother recalls the nature of his youth and early school years starting with his birth in San Francisco in 1917. Born with an insatiable curiosity, a startling faculty for articulation and languages, and unusual physical coordination, Peer seemed, to glide effortlessly through his childhood and school years without any particular striving until West Point and its traditions became his goal. Completing high school at 14, however, he had to mark time at the San Diego Army and Navy Academy for two years before he could compete for a regular army appointment to the Academy at the West Point Preparatory School at Fort Scott, California.</p>
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Here the observations of his enlisted contemporaries take over. They recall that Peer caught everyone’s eye with his maturity and poise, so much so that he was made the school’s first sergeant and became the class leader without taking any ostensible action toward these attainments. For the first time the hallmark of Peer de Silva—his quiet competence and innate leadership ability had emerged.</p>
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Later after entering the Military Academy with the Class of 1941, these same trait gradually led Peer to assume the mantle of Class counsellor, a youthful eminence that his classmates tacitly recognized for it was they who sought his guidance on the man; significant matters that confronted young men about to graduate into the maelstrom of 1941 and World War II.</p>
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Also evident was a subtle but harmless taste for mischief that became somewhat notorious in his First Class year and gained national attention. Peer and a classmate painted NAZI emblem on a shoecloth and raised this improvised flag over the uniform signal on Old South Barracks. Word quickly flashed to the New York Times and to national radio outlets that Military Academy cadets were displaying subversive sentiments by their hoisting of the swastika. However, Peer and his fellow culprit quickly admitted their participation and the incident was recognized and accepted for the harmless prank that it was</p>
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Following graduation Peer joined the Quartermaster Corps at Fort Ord, California. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, General Leslie Groves recruited him for the Manhattan Project where he eventually became the project security officer. Near war’s end he was responsible for the security of the scientists and atomic weapons that were transferred from Los Alamos to Tinian Island where the first two atomic bombs were assembled and delivered on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Shortly thereafter he returned to Washington to learn that the Manhattan Project was to close shop.</p>
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Fortunately Peer’s experience was not to be lost in the quick dissolution of the project. James Murphy, the internationally-known lawyer and key figure in the wartime Office of Strategic Services (OSS), requested his assignment to the Strategic Services Unit (SSU) which inherited the vestiges of OSS Later the SSU was absorbed within the newly created Central Intelligence Agency, and Peer found his permanent niche in the intelligence community.</p>
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In the years that followed Peer invariably appeared in critical cold war intelligence situations. In succession he served as the Chief of the Soviet Russian section of CIA, then Chief of Station in Vienna from 1955-1959 during the Hungarian uprising against the Soviets, and successively Chief of Station in Seoul, Korea, and later Hong Kong.</p>
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All the while Peer was gaining a reputation for innovativeness, imagination and professionalism. William Colby, a former director of CIA said “from the earliest days of the Manhattan Project in which he was responsible for the protection of that secret to more clandestine work in Central Europe and the Far East, Peer de Silva was imaginative, perceptive, and courageous. He made a major contribution to the growth of our permanent professional intelligence service.”</p>
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Peer's career climaxed in September 1963. Then President Johnson informed John McClone, then CIA chief, that we wanted the best and most-qualified man in the CIA to take over as Chief of Station in Saigon. McClone named Peer de Silva and President Johnson accepted the nomination after a careful mutiny of Peer's record. In December 1963, Peer became CIA's Chief of Station in Saigon just one month after the death of President Diem.</p>
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Former CIA director, William Colby, said at Peer’s burial that “he quickly identified the political problems of the Vietnam struggle.” This latter comment by the man who directed the entire civilian foreign intelligence effort perhaps the most accurate summation of Peer de Silva's professional existence. His career coincided with the growth of domestic counter-intelligence in World War II and spanned the emergence and expansion of le Central Intelligence Agency to the present. From his early experience as the head of le Agency's Soviet Russia section, through is days in Vienna during the Hungarian uprising, thence to his penultimate CIA assignment in Saigon, Peer was constantly appraising covert intelligence forms to determine their effectiveness. Invariably he was to fly in the face of tradition and to recommend the discontinuance of sterile, costly and often fatal (to agents) efforts such as trying to infiltrate agents into the USSR, or making Forced entry” missions into North Korea or forth Vietnam. He proposed more meaningful options such as U-2 flyovers and other gainful, technological, intelligence innovations.</p>
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When Peer arrived in Saigon, the United States effort had been up to that time repeatedly thwarted by our inability to protect the loyal civilian population from Viet Cong terror. Gradually as Peer gained experience in Vietnam, he perceived that the intense Vietcong guerilla action could not be effectively eliminated by orthodox United States military strategy and tactics. Road bound and logistics-dependent units that attempted to operate in the dense jungle simply could not contend with small, highly-mobile Vietcong formation. Couching the dilemma along the lines of the familiar Mao analogy, Peer attacked the problem in terms of how to make the civilian population (the water) hostile to the Vietcong (the fish). After intensive brainstorming, Peer and his advisors realized that the Vietnamese farmer and his family were the keys. The farmer knew the VC sympathizers, collaborators, tax collectors, and small armed units; the farmer knew where these elements were located and where they moved. If that information could flow regularly toward friendly elements the Vietcong infrastructure could perhaps then be attacked effectively. So Peer de Silva, CIA Chief in Saigon reasoned. And so the People Action Team (PAT) concept was born. In essence, this concept was an attempt to assail the relative impunity that Vietcong units enjoyed as they applied terror tactics in the provinces. The main thrust of this idea was to create what could be termed local militia units that would constantly intermingle with the farmers, gain their confidence, inculcate the feeling of security against Vietcong terrorism, and thus eventually neutralize the stronghold the VC exercised in the provinces.</p>
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Regrettably Peer was not to enjoy seeing the success of People Action Teams concept and its eventual spread throughout the theatre. On March 30th, 1965, Peer was in his office in Saigon when 350 pounds of plastic explosive was detonated under his office window by Vietcong terrorists. His resultant wounds were severe: Peer lost the sight of one eye, partial sight loss in the other, and suffered multiple wounds of the face and chest. Equally disturbing was to be his later transfer from Vietnam because of his physical limitations. Subsequently Peer accepted assignments to the CIA San Francisco office, to Washington as the Chief of Foreign Intelligence, and finally as station chief in Australia from which he retired in January 1973.</p>
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Peer chose to retire in Florida where he later wrote his memoirs. However the distance between that state and much of his source material in Washington, D.C. soon led Marilyn and Peer to conclude that they could spend their time more pleasurably and profitably in nearby Virginia. There, Peer completed the first book of what he planned to be a trilogy covering his years with the Agency.</p>
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That initial work which he named <em>Sub Rosa: The CIA and the Uses of Intelligence</em> was warmly received and is highly regarded as an accurate reflection of the evolvement of the CIA from its inception to Peer's retirement in 1973. It is indeed unfortunate that death overtook the completion of the other two volumes of his memoirs. Also, Peer's insight, his intellect and his ability to keep covert intelligence in its proper perspective will be sorely missed.</p>
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Only a few of us are destined to walk a path that intersects significantly with the course of our nation's history. In considering Peer's career and contributions, his journey seemed to carry him admirably through several encounters at pivotal points in that story.</p>
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<em>—His friend and roommate, TJC</em></p>
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