Kenneth Absher
 Kenneth Absher  ( spook) | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | May 24, 1935 San Antonio, Texas, USA |
| Died | 25 August 2012 (Age 77) |
| Nationality | US |
| Alma mater | • Texas Military Institute • Phillips Exeter Academy • Princeton University |
| Member of | Association of Former Intelligence Officers/1996 members A-H |
Kenneth Michael Absher was a CIA spook who was involved interrogations in Greece after the 1967 coup and in the 1983 invasion of Grenada.
Education
Absher was raised in San Antonio,Texas. He attended Alamo Heights and Texas Military Institute before graduating from Phillips Exeter Academy in 1953. Absher received a BA in Philosophy from Princeton University in 1957.[1]
Career
In December 1961, Absher moved to Washington, D.C. to begin his career with the Central Intelligence Agency. He worked over 31 years in the Directorate of Operations. He was Chief of Station in two different field assignments, and chief of base in two others (one of them possibly in Miami directing operations against Grenada.[2])
During his career, Absher was active in Western Europe, the Caribbean and Indochina. He had four tours in CIA headquarters managing foreign intelligence operations.
His first overseas assignment was Greece in 1966, in the buildup to the 1967 military coup, until 1971. He was strongly anti-communist.[2]
He provided direct intelligence support to the US handling of events such as the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis; the Vietnam War; the 1983 invasion of Grenada; and the break-up of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact.[1]
He was Chief of Station in Oslo in 1990.[3]
He retired from the CIA on July 31, 1993.
Stonewalling on CIA crimes
Despite having overseen interrogations in Greece during military rule, Absher claimed "he never saw any brutality".[2]
Talking to his daughter when she was writing her book, he said that
You say here that the CIA runs drugs. That hurts. It really does."[2]
and
"So, there's never been a corrupt CIA officer in the whole history of the CIA? Not one bad apple?" I was losing the argument, even though I had read it in the paper. "That's right," Dad said.[2]
Later activities
In his retirement from the CIA, Absher had taught at the University of Texas at San Antonio, and from 1997 to 2002 at the National Defense Intelligence College in Washington, D.C. He was a consultant to the President's Commission on the Roles and Capabilities of the United States Intelligence Community (the Aspin/Brown Commission) which published its appraisal of US intelligence in March 1996. He was a consultant to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.[1][4]
Since 2005, Absher was a Fellow of the Scowcroft Institute of International Affairs and adjunct faculty member at the George Bush School of Government and Public Service, Texas A&M University.[1][5]
References
- ↑ a b c d https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/legacyremembers/kenneth-absher-obituary?id=6116196
- ↑ a b c d e According to the memoirs of his daughter Leslie Absher, Spy daughter queer girl _ a memoir in search of truth, Spokane, Washington, 2022 pages 18,85, 89, 144, 194,218, 240
- ↑ https://cia-spotters.blogspot.com/2014/12/les-cos-de-la-cia-en-1990-cia-chiefs-of.html
- ↑ https://paw.princeton.edu/memorial/kenneth-michael-absher-57
- ↑ https://www.kentuckypress.com/author/kenneth-michael-absher/
