Ben DeFelice CIA

The Boston Globe

Ben DeFelice, 79; Providence native who aided, comforted CIA relatives
By Adam Bernstein, Washington Post  |  April 10, 2004

WASHINGTON -- Ben DeFelice, the Providence native who spent two
decades handling one of the Central Intelligence Agency's most
delicate assignments -- consoling relatives of CIA employees who were
missing, captured, or killed in the line of duty -- died of cancer
Monday at Virginia Hospital Center-Arlington. The resident of Fairfax,
Va., was 79.

Mr. DeFelice was involved in the case of Richard Fecteau of Lynn, a
retired assistant athletic director at Boston University, who was shot
down in 1952 while working for the CIA and was held by China until
1971.

As chief of the casualty-affairs branch and then deputy director of
personnel, Mr. DeFelice helped create a system to look after the
financial interests of employees who were detained or missing while on
assignment for the CIA.

He was also the agency's liaison with those agents' families and used
frequent phone calls and personal visits to smooth over relations with
relatives who viewed the CIA with distrust.

Working with the Red Cross and the State Department, he helped get
food packages to captive CIA employees and arrange for family visits.

He served 20 years as chairman of the Ad Hoc Committee on Prisoners,
composed largely of CIA employees with operational experience. "But
its real purpose, as devised by DeFelice, was to set up an ongoing
forum that would ensure that the men were not forgotten," Ted Gup
wrote in his book "The Book of Honor: Covert Lives and Classified
Deaths at the CIA."

CIA Director George Tenet said in a statement that Mr. DeFelice "set
the highest standards in care and compassion. Over a long career, Ben
pioneered major benefit programs -- including retirement and medical
insurance -- that reflect a profound concern for the men and women who
serve their country in intelligence."

Mr. DeFelice persuaded the agency to provide retirement, health, and
life insurance benefits to US citizens working on contract for the
agency. He also got the authority to invest the salaries of missing
and captured employees instead of keeping the money in standard
accounts that would accrue far less interest. In figuring salary
adjustments, he also calculated career promotions that the employees
might have received had they remained operational.

Mr. DeFelice played a role in several well-publicized espionage cases.
He handled the personal affairs of Francis Gary Powers when the
Russians shot down his U-2 surveillance plane in 1960 and held him for
two years. Powers was released in exchange for jailed Soviet operative
Rudolf Abel.

Mr. DeFelice was also involved in the case of Hugh Redmond, a CIA
officer who was arrested in China in 1951 for supporting
anticommunists. Redmond died in jail in 1970; Chinese authorities
claimed he had killed himself with a razor.

Mr. DeFelice saw a better outcome in the matter of John Downey and
Fecteau, two CIA employees whom the Chinese government shot down over
Manchuria in 1952 during the Korean War. For two years, their fate was
unknown, and the CIA declared them dead.

Then in 1954, the Chinese tried them for espionage and gave Fecteau a
20-year sentence and Downey a life term. In a prelude to President
Richard Nixon's historic 1972 visit to China, Fecteau was released in
1971. Downey was freed in 1973.

Fecteau, now 76, said Mr. DeFelice "was a very warm and friendly guy,
down to earth. He never acted like a bureaucrat."

Fecteau said Mr. DeFelice took care to comfort his mother. "His
assurances kept up her faith and courage," he said. "He would walk in,
like my mother said, like a next-door neighbor. He never acted
officious to her."

Downey, 73, a retired Superior Court judge in New Haven, said Mr.
DeFelice also had a special rapport with his mother, who at first did
not think the CIA was doing enough to secure her son's release.

"When Ben was first assigned to the case, he thought she was the
biggest pain in the neck, and she was relentless in trying to keep our
name before government officials," Downey said. "He grew to love her,
and she was fond of him and had a very warm and loving relationship as
the years rolled by."

Benedetto DeFelice was the youngest of four children born to Italian
immigrants. During his Army service in World War II, he played trumpet
in a band that performed at military functions in southern Italy.

He was a 1949 graduate of Georgetown University's foreign service
school and a 1954 graduate of Georgetown's law school, where he was
fourth in his class. He began working for the CIA in 1953, became
chief of the casualty-affairs branch in the mid-1950s, and was deputy
director of personnel from 1973 to 1983.

He retired in 1987 as director of information services. He processed
freedom of information requests and balanced them against the CIA's
security needs. He also met with historians to review the agency's
process of declassifying documents for the public.

His decorations included the Career Intelligence Medal and two awards
of the Distinguished Intelligence Medal. In September 1997, when the
CIA celebrated its 50th anniversary, Mr. DeFelice was named a
trailblazer, one of 50 officers who made defining contributions to the
agency.

At the time of the ceremony, The Washington Post reported that he
often attended funeral services and handed a family member a letter of
condolence from the CIA's director. He would read the letter in the
presence of a CIA officer and then spirit it back to the office
because of security concerns.

Medals were also handled that way, because, he said, "we didn't want
to impose an unnecessary burden on the widow."

He leaves his wife of 57 years, Alma Gregory DeFelice of Fairfax;
three children, Peter G. of Washington, Mary A. of Fairfax and Paul A.
of Lake Ridge, Va.; two brothers; and three grandchildren.