NICARAGUA/CIA MINING

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP88-01070R000201170015-3
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 21, 2016
• Document Release Date: December 10, 2008
• Sequence Number: 15
• Publication Date: April 26, 1984
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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ABC WORLD THEWS TONIGHT
20 April 1984
NICARAGUA/ JENNINGS: And now Central America, Congress and the CIA.
CIA MINING CIA Director William Casey went to face a very angry
Senate Intelligence Committee today. Afterwards, senators
said Casey admitted he could have done a better job of
informing them about the mining of Nicaragua's harbors.
That is why Senator Moynihan said again yesterday he would
resign as vice chairman of the committee. After Casey's
apologies and press from his fellow senators, Moynihan has
changed his mind.
JENNINGS: Richard Threlkeld has a status report on the
CIA tonight. Once again, the agency's image is pretty
badly tarnished.
THRELKELD: No secret war was ever less secret than the
one the CIA, is running against Nicaragua. Its secret
army, the so-called contras, seem to show up on the TV
news every night. The CIA might as well be bankrolling
the Los Angeles Raiders. The president won't talk about
it. PRESIDENT RONALD REAGAN: That's a subject I will
pick another time to talk about.
THRELKELD: But everybody else is and saying not very nice
things about the CIA's handiwork mining Nicaragua's
harbors. REP. THOMAS P. O'NEILL (D-Mass.): America is a
country that abhors terrorists, and that certainly is an
act of terrorism.
THRELKELD: The last time the CIA became such a'cause
celebre was in 1975. In hearings chaired by the late
Senator Frank Church, the CIA was called to account for a
number if misdeeds and ultimately punished in the Carter
years. Half its staff and close to half its budget were
blue-penciled. The Reagan administration raised the CIA's
budget to an estimated $1.5 billion a year and brought in
as director Mr. Reagan's campaign manager and close
friend, William Casey, to put the CIA's 18,000 employees
into fighting trim and get back in the business of covert
secret action. DAVID WISE: Both in number and in scope
and size, the covert operations have increased. The
budget of CIA has increased as well, especially in the
covert area.
THRELKELD: As author and CIA-watcher David Wise notes,
the CIA is now secretly active in at least a dozen
countries around the world. Yet from Nicaragua's Puerto
Sandino all the way back to the Bay of Pigs, covert action
has often come back to haunt the CIA and whoever was
president. MORTON HALPERIN (Center for Nat'l Security
Confrncr
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Studies): None of the senior officials of the Reagan
administration seem to have learned the basic lesson,
which is that if the CIA is sent off to do things that
don't have a public consensus within the United States,
they're sent off to engage in activities that are
inconsistent with what Americans think of as appropriate
behavior for its government. But they ultimately fail and
fail in a way that, ah, affects the ability of the agency
to do the thing that it's supposed to do, which is to
provide information to the president.
THRELKELD: The current complaint is that Director Casey,
an impatient man, who does not suffer Congress gladly,
didn't tell the CIA's two congressional oversight'
committees all he should have about Nicaragua. Now
Congress is embarrassed and fed up with the CIA and covert
action. RAY CLINE (Georgetown University): There is a
legitimate role for the United States government to do a
few things secretly.
THRELKELD: Old CIA hands like former Deputy Director Ray
Cline think the fuss over Nicaragua is giving all covert
action a bad name, and that's dangerous. CLINE: And yet
we're in a fair way of sealing ourself off from that kind
of counteraction to hostile foreign policies that, ah,
keeps you out of big wars and avoids the alternative of
just surrender and letting your friends go down the drain.
THRELKELD: If that's so, David Wise thinks the CIA has
only itself.to blame. WISE: I think the CIA has shot
itself in the foot. Ah, by mining the harbors in
Nicaragua, number one, and by failing to tell the Senate
committee at least fully and accurately the CIA has hurt
itself more than at any time since the investigations of
the mid-1970s that brought out the abuses of the
intelligence agencies.
THRELKELD: Americans need to trust that their secret
agents are not going to go off on.their own or on orders
from the White House and do something we'll all later come
to regret. The Nicaraguan affair has destroyed that trust
and made the CIA once again the butt of an argument. If,
in this election year, Americans can finally decide just
how they expect their CIA to behave in the national
interest, maybe it'll be just as well the CIA's cover has
been blown. Richard Threlkeld, ABC News, Washington.
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