TRANSCRIPT OF THE REMARKS OF WILLIAM J. CASEY DIRECTOR OF CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AT THE AMERICAN ISRAEL PUBLIC AFFAIRS COMMITTEE POLICY CONFERENCE SUNDAY, 6 APRIL 1986

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP88G01117R001004050002-9
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 15
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 5, 2011
• Sequence Number: 2
• Publication Date: April 6, 1986
• Content Type: MISC

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/01/05: CIA-RDP88GO1 1 17RO01 004050002-9
REMARKS OF WILLIAM J. CASEY
DIRECTOR OF CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE
AT THE
AMERICAN ISRAEL PUBLIC AFFAIRS COMMITTEE POLICY CONFERENCE
Sunday, 6 April 1986
Washington Hilton Hotel
Washington D.C.
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/01/05: CIA-RDP88GO1 1 17RO01 004050002-9
 Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/01/05: CIA-RDP88GO1 1 17RO01 004050002-9
I appreciate your generous introduction.
I plan to talk to you about the Middle East in the context of some new
dimensions which we see in the strategic balance between the Soviet bloc and
the free democracies. In this context I want to look at the present dangers
and how we can meet them in the Middle East, the area of our particular
interest this evening.
I do it this way because I believe that today we are witnessing
particularly intensive efforts to tilt the overall strategic balance against
the West and because we Americans have failed, thus far, to see the
interrelationship between what is happening in Central America and the Middle
East, the Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf, and the South Atlantic and the
South China Sea. Increasingly, what we are trying to do in the Middle East
and elsewhere must be geared to an ever more aggressive Soviet involvement and
the growing danger from radical and violent groups operating in the Middle
East. And while we confront this threat, we must continue to protect our
overall strategic posture from similar and complementary pressures elsewhere.
We all know roughly the history of the strategic balance and how
essential it is to protect the free world. From the beginning, the Soviets
had the dominance in land warfare. This was countered by American superiority
in strategic weapons. By 1980, the Soviet strategic offensive forces had
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/01/05: CIA-RDP88GO1 1 17RO01 004050002-9
 Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/01/05: CIA-RDP88GO1117R001004050002-9
caught up and, in many areas, surpassed ours. The Soviets are now protecting
their land-based missile force by making it mobile, whereas the U.S. mobile
missiles will not be deployed until sometime in the 1990s.
They have for well over a decade conducted a vigorous missile defense
program. They are completing a missile defense system around Moscow.
Facing this combination of offensive and defensive missile forces capable
of a first strike against our nuclear deterrent, our SDI research is examining
whether effective defenses, which threaten no one, can provide a more stable
deterrent.
While we negotiate to scale down the huge nuclear arsenal with which the
two superpowers confront each other, a more insidious threat may be developing.
This massive nuclear and conventional force which the Soviets have may be
only a shield to make it easier and less risky to intimidate and subvert
weaker governments and to gobble up pieces of territory around the globe.
They have acquired bridgeheads in Cuba and Vietnam, in South Yemen and
Ethiopia and Angola, and Nicaragua, Cambodia and Afghanistan and elsewhere.
These bridgeheads are being linked in a growing logistical and support network
supported by expanding Soviet naval and air power.
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/01/05: CIA-RDP88GO1 1 17RO01 004050002-9
 Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/01/05: CIA-RDP88G01117R001004050002-9
In the Caribbean, the Soviets have created in Cuba the strongest military
force in the Western Hemisphere, with the exception only of our own. Over the
last few years, they have given Cuba massive infusions of military hardware.
Today, we have an extension of this Cuban base on the American mainland
in Nicaragua. Similar links and components of this network have been
established all around the globe. From Angola, Soviet naval and air forces
now routinely operate astride Western shipping lanes in the Atlantic.
Similarly, this network threatens Western sea lanes in the Red Sea, in
the Arabian Sea, and the Indian Ocean from bases in Ethiopia and South Yemen.
And Soviet naval and air forces operating out of our former bases at Cam Ranh
Bay and Da Nang in Vietnam command the vital sea lanes linking Japan, Taiwan,
and South Korea with Middle East oil supplies and their Southeast Asian allies.
It is the Mediterranean segment of this Soviet global network which here
concerns us most. It is anchored in Libya and Syria, which are gaining
influence and control in Lebanon and Sudan to further squeeze Israel and the
moderate Arab states of the Middle East.
These bridgeheads are very real and they are not static. They have a
purpose. They are locating their strategic choke points in the world's sea
lanes or in areas of high tension or potential conflict. They are being used
to spread subversion and terror and spawn new bridgeheads in neighboring
countries. From Cuba and Nicaragua terrorism and subversion are being
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/01/05: CIA-RDP88G01117R001004050002-9
 Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/01/05: CIA-RDP88GO1 1 17RO01 004050002-9
exported throughout Central America and into Chile and Colombia and elsewhere
in Latin America. From Libya there is invasion of Chad, attempts at
destabilizing governments in Egypt and Tunisia, Zaire and Sudan and subversion
throughout West Africa. From Angola there are intrusions into Zaire. From
Soviet-occupied Afghanistan there are continuing incursions into Pakistan.
And we have a new Soviet leader, Mr. Gorbachev, and already a hallmark of
his regime is an intensified effort to nail down and cement these bridgeheads
and make them permanent. Having piled close to two billion dollars worth of
arms into Angola, Soviet advisors and Cuban troops are feverishly preparing a
campaign, likely to be launched this month, and designed to wipe out the
forces resisting the Marxist government of Angola.
Starting two months ago with half-a-billion dollars worth of
sophisticated weapons recently acquired, the Sandinista Army with Cuban
helicopter pilots and combat direction, has been going all out to destroy the
Contras down there before the Congress acts to renew assistance to them. Last
week some 1,500 Sandinista troops crossed the Honduran border for this purpose
and this week we have seen thousands of Miskito Indians of the eastern part of
Nicaragua driven across the border into Honduras.
The Soviets are also moving hard to nail down their bridgeheads in the
Middle East. In South Yemen we have recently seen the application of the
so-called Brezhnev Doctrine which says: "Once communist, always communist."
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/01/05: CIA-RDP88GO1 1 17RO01 004050002-9
 Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/01/05: CIA-RDP88GO1 1 17RO01 004050002-9
The government there had begun to open up to the West. Hardline
pro-Soviet exiles returned from Moscow and initiated a coup against the South
Yemen President. This coup soon escalated into a bloody civil war between
military and tribal elements loyal to the President and those of the hardline
Soviet camp there. And after the Soviets watched the blood flow for a few
days, planes flown by Soviet pilots pounded pro-government forces and Soviet
weapons began to flow into the country to rebel forces.
We have seen this message before. In Afghanistan in 1979 and in Grenada
in 1982. It has told us that leaders of governments installed by Moscow who
seek improved relations with the West do so at their peril. The Soviets are
not ready to brook any challenge in any part of their empire.
Now until recently in all this, the Soviet hand was more carefully
screened and more subtly used in the Middle East. Today the Soviet investment
in Syria and Libya is at an all-time high, with some 6,000 Soviet bloc
military advisors and a massive arsenal there of Soviet planes, tanks and
rockets in these two countries. These two countries, along with Iran, have
discovered in terrorism a new low-cost, low-risk method of attacking
democratic governments in Europe, the Middle East, and Latin America.
Terrorism is today an integral part of the foreign policy and defense
apparatus of these states. Tiny Libya (some 3 million people) reaches south
into the heart of Africa and east to press, together with Ethiopia, on Sudan.
And we see Syria pushing hard to complete its domination of Lebanon and bring
sophisticated Soviet weapons south, closer to the Israel border.
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/01/05: CIA-RDP88GO1 1 17RO01 004050002-9
 Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/01/05: CIA-RDP88GO1 1 17RO01 004050002-9
STAT
This creeping imperialism has, in my view, two primary targets
worldwide--the oil fields of the Middle East which are the lifeline of the
Western alliance and the isthmus between North and South America.
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/01/05: CIA-RDP88GO1 1 17RO01 004050002-9
 Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/01/05: CIA-RDP88GO1 1 17RO01 004050002-9
Afghanistan, South Yemen, Ethiopia, as well as Cam Ranh Bay in Vietnam, and
Mozambique and Angola in southern Africa, bring Soviet power much closer to
the sources of oil and minerals on which the industrial nations depend and put
Soviet naval and air power astride the sea lanes which carry those resources
to America, Europe and Japan.
Capabilities to threaten the Panama Canal in the short term and Mexico in
a somewhat longer term are being developed in Central America, with Soviet
support, by Cuba and Nicaragua. They work quietly and steadily toward their
objectives of building the power of the state security apparatus, building the
strongest armed forces in Central America, and becoming a center for the
export of subversion to Nicaragua's neighbors and further into Latin America
and up into Mexico.
This expansion of the Soviet empire, while still threatening, has been
slowed if not halted. In the decade of the 1980s, the Soviets have not
acquired a single new colony. The Soviet Union cannot support its empire
economically. For every country that has embraced it, Soviet Marxism has
become a one-way ticket to oppression and poverty.
During the 1970s, people in many parts of the world were flocking to join
communist insurgencies. In the 1980s, this trend has been reversed. Today
some half million people around the world are fighting in resistance movements
against Communist regimes or Communist occupation. Afghanistan is virtually a
nation in arms fighting against 120,000 Soviet occupation troops. In Angola,
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/01/05: CIA-RDP88GO1 1 17RO01 004050002-9
 Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/01/05: CIA-RDP88GO1 1 17RO01 004050002-9
Savimbi has some 60,000 fighters in all parts of the country battling the
Cubans, the Marxist Angolans, and Soviet advisors. In Ethiopia, Eritrean and
Tigrean rebels fight the Marxist Mengistu government and the largest army in
Africa with its Cuban and Soviet advisors. In Cambodia, 50,000 insurgents
struggle bitterly with 170,000 occupying Vietnamese soldiers.
These wars of national liberation tieing waged in Soviet colonies on three
continents represent a geopolitical phenomenon of immense historial
significance. Just as the Third World rejected Western colonialism in the
1950s and 1960s, so it is now rejecting Soviet colonialism in the 1980s. And
it is using the Soviets' own strategy of armed guerrilla resistance -- wars of
liberation -- to do so.
And if we hold firm, the pendulum of history will complete its swing away
from Soviet Marxism as a model for countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin
America, and toward the concepts of democracy and a free market economy. In
Latin America, for example, Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, Venezuela, Ecuador,
Peru, Colombia, Panama, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala are
all functioning democracies. Elsewhere the Soviets have over-expanded and are
on the defensive; and the radical Arab states are weak economically and
without friends politically, while Egypt, Jordan and other Arab moderates are
a majority, do have good friends and outside support.
What do we do about all this? To thwart the threat of Soviet
expansionism and radicalism in the Middle East, we have used in this
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/01/05: CIA-RDP88GO1 1 17RO01 004050002-9
 Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/01/05: CIA-RDP88GO1117R001004050002-9
government and will expand upon, together with our friends and allies, three
inter-related strategies -- improved strategic cooperation, the pursuit of
peace, and economic development.
In the last few years, the United States has strengthened and invigorated
its strategic partnership with Israel. As Secretary Shultz said here last
year "strategic cooperation between the United States and Israel has become a
formal, institutional process." And he repeated that this week in his talks
with Prime Minister Peres.
Together we must fight terrorism, a threat which faces all our friends in
the Middle East and elsewhere. Middle East radicals dedicated to weakening
the West and Israel are also dedicated to the destruction of moderate and
pro-Western regimes in the Arab world. They are determined that a peaceful
settlement never be reached, determined to polarize the Arab world so that no
accommodation can ever be reached, so that Arab states pursuing a pragmatic
course collapse in front of Marxist or fundamentalist assaults. The Soviet
Union, while it cannot always control these movements, profits from them as
they weaken or eliminate areas of Western influence in the region.
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/01/05: CIA-RDP88GO1 1 17RO01 004050002-9
 Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/01/05: CIA-RDP88GO1 1 17RO01 004050002-9
We remain deeply committed to pursuing a political process to end the
Arab-Israeli dispute. The reinvigoration of the peace process is, in my view,
of overriding geopolitical importance in order to deny the Soviets a lever for
entree to the Middle East. We remain ready to assist the parties directly
concerned to negotiate face to face a solution to their differences. We
reaffirmed this determination to the Israeli Prime Minister last week.
Finally, we are convinced that economic development is critical to
building barriers to radicalism and Soviet imperialism. Prime Minister Peres
has proposed joint economic cooperation among Israel, Egypt, sand Jordan under
a new "Marshall Plan" style program. Already the United States provides more
economic aid to these states than any others. We are determined to stand by
this commitment. We hope that other states with an interest in the region --
including the Europeans and Japan -- will enlist in regional economic help.
So, strategic cooperation, diplomacy for peace, and economic development
are the keys to maintaining the momentum built in these last years to halting
Soviet advances in the Middle East. We have vital interests there and shared
values with Israel. Working together we must maintain those values in the
Middle East and the Mediterranean and elsewhere.
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/01/05: CIA-RDP88GO1 1 17RO01 004050002-9
 Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/01/05: CIA-RDP88GO1117R001004050002-9
Questions and Answers
Answer: Well, we have made pretty good strides in that over the last ten
years, but I believe there is more that we can do. We have done some things
that were highly counter-productive in character. We've practically destroyed
our nuclear power capability, while other countries have substantially reduced
their dependence on Middle East oil through that course. We have installed
and can install a great many more conservation measures, and above all, we can
explore and use our talents to develop sources of oil elsewhere in the world,
off-shore and in other continents. We have the greatest oil-finding
capability in the world and that is the most likely mode of reducing
dependence on Middle East oil. We also have technologies in this country
which can be applied to relieve the third world countries of the heavy drain
that oil purchases place upon their economic development and their resources.
These technologies can develop power from all kinds of indigenous fuel,
shale, bagasse in tropical countries, even refuse and garbage. So, we have
great capabilities and we need to get our technology and our management skills
and capital resources and apply them in that direction.
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/01/05: CIA-RDP88GO1 1 17RO01 004050002-9
 Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/01/05: CIA-RDP88G01117R001004050002-9
Q&A -- page 2
QUESTION 1: WHAT IS THE EXTENT OF INTELLIGENCE COOPERATION IN THE AREA OF
COUNTER-TERRORISM WITH THE SO-CALLED ARAB MODERATE STATES IN THE MIDDLE EAST
AND WHAT ADDITIONAL COOPERATION WOULD YOU LIKE TO SEE FROM OUR ALLIES IN
EUROPE AND OUR FRIENDS AROUND THE WORLD?
Answer: Well, I'm not going to get very specific about that, but I will say
that there has evolved, over recent years, a worldwide counter-terrorist
network which is based on active intelligence exchange between the countries
other security services, -- moderate Arab, European and all our friends
everywhere -- who do a lot of training and providing technical services to
improve the capabilities of those services, and we collaborate with them in
counter-terrorist actions. I think one of the things we haven't done -- we've
done very badly -- is develop a concerted diplomatic action of economic and
political sanctions to evoke a penalty on the states which practice
state-sponsored terrorism and I will say that many of our friends and allies
have been slow on that and we can only hope and, I think, believe that the
increasing outrageous character of the terrorist attacks that are recurring in
all these countries will stimulate and strengthen cooperation of that kind.
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/01/05: CIA-RDP88G01117R001004050002-9
 ? Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/01/05: CIA-RDP88GO1 1 17RO01 004050002-9
QAA--page 3
QUESTION 2: WHAT IS THE UNITED STATES DOING TO DISCOURAGE THE SAUDIS FROM
PROVIDING FINANCIAL SUPPORT TO THE PLO AND OTHERS WHO SUPPORT TERRORISM?
Well, we work with them; we talk to them about countering terrorism and
not supporting terrorist violence. They give us lip service to that. They do
support these countries and some of these forces for reasons of fear or
intimidation or to pursue their own political objectives. And there is only a
limited degree to which we can influence them in those matters where they see
their vital interest involved.
QUESTION 3: HOW SIGNIFICANT IS MUSLIM FUNDAMENTALISM IN EGYPT A FACTOR IN
TERMS OF DESTABILIZING EGYPT AND WHAT CAN OUR COUNTRY AND OTHERS DO TO BE
HELPFUL THERE?
Well, I really don't want to see in the newspaper tomorrow morning that
the Director of CIA has evaluated Muslim fundamentalism in Egypt, so I'll pass
that question.
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/01/05: CIA-RDP88GO1 1 17RO01 004050002-9
 Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/01/05: CIA-RDP88GO1117R001004050002-9
Q&A--page 4
Thank you very much, Mr. Casey. In lieu of that partial answer, the President
of AIPAC would like to make a statement and he doesn't care if he is covered
by the media tomorrow and that is -- Yes, it is safe to-travel to England,
France and Israel for American Jews, particularly if you are on El Al Airlines.
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/01/05: CIA-RDP88GO1 1 17RO01 004050002-9