CIA ACTIVITIES

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP88-01070R000301800003-5
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 3
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 14, 2010
• Sequence Number: 3
• Publication Date: July 18, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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RADIO TV REPORTS, INC.
4701 WILLARD AVENUE, CHEVY CHASE, MARYLAND 20815 [phone]
PROGRAM CBS Evening News
July 18, 1985 7:00 PM
STAnON W D V M T V
CBS Network
Washington, DC
DAN RATHER: The House today passed and sent to the
Senate a secret fiscal - '86 budget for the CIA and other
intelligence agencies. Few details, few numbers, few explanat-
ions were given. We do know that, among other things, the CIA is
engaged in a well-publicized secret war in Central America, a war
commanded not by any Army general, but by a 72-year-old former
Wall Street lawyer.
Pentagon correspondent David Martin profiles Casey's
DAVID MARTIN: Lights burn late at the CIA. This was
one of the first buildings to go on alert last month when TWA
Flight 847 was hijacked.
The U.S. rushed a 20-man counter-terrorist team to
Sicily to prepare for a possible rescue mission. More than half
the team came from the CIA. A rescue was never attempted, but
the episode shows how deeply involved the CIA is in the battle
against terrorism. That is only one of the battles to which the
CIA is committing new forces.
CIA is nearing completion of its biggest buildup since
the Vietnam War, a buildup run by William Casey, Director of
Central Intelligence. His close ties to the President, combined
with recorded increases in the intelligence budget, have made
Casey perhaps the most powerful CIA Director since Allen Dulles.
WALTER HUDDLESTON: CIA Director Bill Casey is certainly
of the old school, and he believes that the agency should be a
force and should be an entity to deal with throughout the world.
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MARTIN: This new building will double the size of CIA
Headquarters, making room for more computers and people. In the
last five years, there has been an increase of about 30 percent
in the number of people working for the CIA. The CIA would like
to hire even more.
Many of the new recruits come here, to "The Farm," a CIA
training base complete with pop-up targets and its own private
airstrip. Hundreds of new intelligence officers trained here
have been sent overseas, many to Central America, Asia and
Africa, areas which had been neglected for many years. So many
new officers have been sent overseas, the CIA is having trouble
finding cover jobs to mask their real occupations.
But Casey cannot build up a worldwide network of agents
overnight, particularly when the CIA is still worried about
running afoul of Congress.
SENATOR WILLIAM COHEN: I think it's too early to count
it a success yet. I think they're still a little bit gun-shy,
and I'm not sure that's all bad.
MARTIN: What the CIA learns overseas goes into
classified intelligence estimates. The CIA is turning out three
times as many now as in the 1970s. The analysts have scored some
successes: predicting Yuri Andropov's rise to power, and
spotting Mikhail Gorbachev early on as a real comer. But they
were surprised by Argentina's occupation of the Falklands and by
the ouster of the chief of the Honduran armed forces, a man the
CIA depended on in conducting its not-so-secret war against
Nicaragua.
Nicaragua is the CIA's most controversial operation, one
in which the agency is not just spying, but actually trying to do
harm to an unfriendly government, at one point even going so far
as to mine its harbors.
There are scores of these covert operations going on
around the world, ranging from support for dissidents opposed to
Libya's Muammar Qaddafi, to arming of guerrillas fighting Soviet
troops in Afghanistan. Covert operations have increased not only
in number, but also in size.
HUDDLESTON: They involve many, many people, and also
carry with them a considerable amount of risk if they are
revealed, either the life of individuals or to the reputation and
credibility of the United States.
MARTIN: Congress watches the CIA much more closely than
it used to. But that alone does not guaranty successful
operations. That will depend on the quality of the people coming
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into the CIA and on the ability of whatever Administration is in
power to make good use of the intelligence the CIA provides.
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