CIA OFFICER W.K. HARVEY

WILLIAM KING HARVEY
Harvey was born in Ohio and his mother was a notable female academic whose seeming nature for collecting information led him to journalistic reporting. Harvey’s parents would never marry and the absence of a male role model possibly inspired him to seek out authority figures. He graduated from Indiana University with a degree in law and William’s desire for authority led him to the Federal Bureau of Investigation amidst the nineteenth forties. He performed counter espionage operations for years but he would prove too brash for J. Edgar Hoover's image of a proper special agent. Harvey tried again to gain official influence by joining the Central Intelligence Agency later the same decade. He was appointed to lead a group within the Soviet Intelligence Branch conducting sensitive illegal compartmentalized operations.

William Harvey’s Earlier Agency Years

By the nineteen fifties Harvey served as the Chief of Berlin Station and was undertaking operations to hamper the Soviet Union’s growing influence. Amid nineteen fifty-nine William became the leader of CIA’s Foreign Intelligence Staff D sabotage group that acquired enemy signals and cryptographic intelligence. He further oversaw the Agency’s Task Force W that sought to overthrow Fidel Castro’s regime and managed Phase II of the Castro assassination plots. The operations under his purview would range from acquiring tainted objects for clandestine poisoning to hiring foreign agents that would spot and recruit assassins. Harvey’s other notorious activities such as Project ZRRIFLE directly link him to several assassination schemes targeting multiple foreign heads of state. Amidst nineteen sixty-three he was reassigned to less prestigious role as the Agency’s Chief of Rome Station within Italy’s capital. Two years later Harvey’s increased erratic actions, disregarding orders, and copious drinking led to his self-induced retirement.