IS SECRECY POSSIBLE IF THE ...

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000302620025-3
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: July 20, 2010
• Sequence Number: 25
• Publication Date: May 24, 1984
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/07/20: CIA-RDP90-00552R000302620025-3
ARTICLE APPEARED
ON PAGE /C
TOM BRADEN
Is secrecy
possible'
lithe...
e'll probably never
know whether Sen.
Jesse Helms, the right-
wing moralist from
North Carolina, did or did not make
public secrets of t.-ie Central Intel-
ligence Agency when he let fly with
his accusations that the CIA
financed the election campaign of
Jose Napoleon Duarte.
The reason we won't know is that
nobody except Mr. Helms wants to
taint Mr. Duarte's election. Most
senators assume that the CIA did its
best to help him win it, are glad he
won, and don't wish to embarrass
him by asking who paid the bill.
If Mr. Duarte had not won, aid to
El Salvador would have been cut off,
because everybody also assumes
that Mr. Duarte's rival, Roberto
D'Aubuisson, is tied into the right-
wing death squads which have been
the chief obstacle to aid.
So it really doesn't matter much
whether Sen. Helms used informa-
tion he acquired by virtue of his
post on the Senate's Select Intelli-
gence Committee or whether, as he
says, he made his charges after
reading an El Salvador newspaper.
The important point is that once
again it has demonstrated that the
Central Intelligence Agency does
not seem to be able to keep a covert
operation covert.
Indeed, it appears that, under the
direction of William Casey, the
agency doesn't care anymore.
Maybe Mr. Casey's World War II
background tells him that secrecy
doesn't matter. Mr. Casey had
charge of running agents into Ger-
many during the closing days of
WASHINGTON TIMES
24 May 1984
Rustrat on by Tarty E; Smith i The Washington Times
that war and though he was largely
successful, his success did not
depend upon great secrecy. If some
of the agents completed their sab-
otage .assignments, that was suc-
cess. Getting caught meant death to
the agent but no embarrassment to
the country.
Forty years later, Mr. Casey
.' seems to be proceeding on the same
assumptions. In Nicaragua, we are
conducting a "covert" operation
consisting of an army of thousands
and the Congress debates the ques-
tion of whether or not to keep the
army in being just as though it con-
sisted of regular units of the United
States. The word "covert" is so
much baggage.
It surprises me that no one seems
to care. "Plausible deniability" was
a phrase which used to have a hard
meaning and to which covert oper-
ators attached a great significance.
But if Mr. Reagan were to deny to a
foreign statesman that the United
States was supporting an army in
Nicaragua or had paid for the elec-
tion of Mr. Duarte, he would be
regarded as both a fool and a liar. Of
course he will never make such a
claim.
Does this tendency to shrug our
shoulders and permit our secret
operations to become widely known
make any difference to the national
*,O,
!t'iA
security? I should think so, and in
at least two ways.
First;. it is destructive of morale
and:disoipline at the Central Intel-
ligence Agency. If it doesn't matter
whether secrets become public,
why bother keeping secrets?
Second, and more important, the
habit at not caring %thether covert
operations become public removes
an important restriction on the
president and the director of Cen-
tral Intelligence.
Until the era of Ronald Reagan
and Bill Casey, there were certain
things the United States couldn't do
because it couldn't do them
secretly.
Covert action implies a certain
respect for the good opinion of man-
kind. We might want to undertake
;an action in a Western European
i country which would be helpful to
our own security. But if we thought
the general public in that country
would find out about the action, we
might decide that the risk of endan-
gering our relations and our good
name with the people of that coun-
try would make the game not worth
the candle.
Mr. Casey and Mr. Reagan are
'saying by their deeds that in Cen-
tral America, at least, we no longer
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/07/20: CIA-RDP90-00552R000302620025-3
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