'POST' SETS UP REAGAN AS TERRORIST TARGET

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000302480006-2
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: November 13, 2012
• Sequence Number: 6
• Publication Date: November 16, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/11/13: CIA-RDP90-00965R000302480006-2
HUMAN EVENTS
ARTICLE APPENED 16 November 1985
ON PAGE ?I
'Post' Sets Up Reagan as Terrorist Target
Washington Post Publisher Katherine Graham
likes to pretend she's a friend of First Lady Nancy
Reagan, who stayed with Graham for several days
this summer on Martha's Vineyard. But Graham's
"friendship" apparently doesn't mean she cares a
hoot about whether her paper is used to trigger the
murder of Nancy's husband, the President.
Last week, to the consternation of almost every-
one in Washington, except the Washington Post,
the Post carried a front-page story saying that
President Reagan had authorized last fall a Central
Intelligence Agency covert operation "designed to
undermine the Libyan regime headed by Col.
Muammar Qaddafi......
The story went on to note that it was supported
by Secretary of State George Shultz, CIA Director
William Casey and a narrow majority of both the
Senate and House. Select Committees on In-
telligence, which oversee the CIA.
Written by the Post's Robert Woodward, the
article said that the chairman and vice chairman
of the Senate Intelligence Committee?David
Durenberger (R.-Minn.) and Patrick Leahy (D.-
Vt.)?had conveyed their opposition to the plan in
a letter to the White House, asking how the plan
could avoid the government prohibition against
assassination. ,
The White House responded, sources told
Woodward, that there was no plan at all to
assassinate Qaddafi, and asked the two senators to
delete the word "assassination" from their letter.
They declined to do so.
Intelligence sources were outraged. Not only
were they angry at those who leaked the informa-
tion, but they were furious at the Post for printing
it. That story, they insisted, not only blew the
covert operation against Libya, a terrorist state
backing at least 30 radical insurgencies worldwide,
but armed Qaddafi with a pretext to crack down
harshly on dissidents at home and murder
American officials in Libya or abroad.
"The Washington Post appears to relish
stories that put the lives of U.S. officials in
s danger," said one intelligence expert.
What's particularly interesting about this story
is that the Post is well aware that its article could
well prompt Qaddafi to order another plan to kill
the President.
Herbert Romerstein, who served as a profes-
sional staff member of the House Committee on
Intelligence from 1977 until 1983, remarks in a
just-published book that the Post helped incite
Qadchrfi to fever pitch in 1981.
On July 237..Ltliat year, Rbriierstein says in a
paper included in Intelligence Requirements for
the 1980s, put out by the Washington-based Na-
tional Strategy Information Center, the Post
reported that several members of the House Intel-
ligence Committee had sent a letter to the CIA pro-
testing a certain covert action. Although the Post
claimed the letter came from both Republicans and
Democrats, only the Democrats had signed it. And
while the issue was not, in itself, of great signi-
ficance, press speculation about it caused very
serious problems.
Newsweek?which is owned by the Post? false-
ly asserted, said Romerstein, that the covert action
in question was a "plot to kill Libyan dictator Qad-
dafi. The so-called Free Officers Association, Qad-
dafi's supporters in Libya, then threatened to
national agency to combat terrorism, Woodward
replied (according to the June 27 issue of the
Washington Times):
"It's not our job. Our job, simply and hap-
pily, is to find out what's going on and publish
it." The audience rumbled in dissent, noted
the Times, "and even some of the other panel
members drew back."
Juliana Pilon, a senior policy analyst with the
GRAHAM
murder President Reagan.
'Libyan hit team' threat...
The Post, in short, knew full well that its most
recent story could lead to the formation of another
Qaddafi hit team. Efforts by HUMAN EVENTS
to reach Woodward for an explanation as to why
the Post ran the story were fruitless, but Wood-
ward has proved in the past that he's very indiffer-
ent about jeopardizing the lives of Americans or
doing anything that would make it more difficult
for states like Libya to engage in international
terrorist actions.
In May of this year, the intelligence community
was sharply critical of Woodward for his front-
page story that left a totally falsd impression that
the CIA was somehow connected with the March 8
car bombing in a Beirut suburb that killed more
than 80 Shiite Moslems.
Even the Democratic-dominated House Select
Committee on Intelligence dismissed the implica-
tions of the Post story, while an Administration of-
ficial contended that the Post's actions "put the
lives of every American in Lebanon in jeopar-
dy.... I find it utterly contemptible. It invites
retaliation against every American in Beirut, in-
cluding women and children."
Indeed, one of the hijackers of TWA flight 847
used the news story to justify the murder of Robert
Stethem, the Navy diver brutally murdered by his
captors.
Woodward and the Post, however, appear to
have little concern about terrorism and its conse-
quences, the loss of innocent life.
Asked last year at the Jonathan Institute's inter-
national conference on terrorism whether the news
media would share information with an inter-
Thus was born the
WOOD WARD
Heritage Foundation, in a paper delivered before
an anti-terrorist conference in Washington last
week, said she found Woodward's actions
despicable.
The concept of press irresponsibility, she stressed,
has surely "reached a new low with the publi-
cation in the Washington Post on Sunday, Novem-
ber 3, of Bob Woodward's story disclosing a
'vulnerability assessment' which allegedly recom-
mended covert U.S. support of foes of Libya's
head terrorist Muammar Qaddafi. Retired Navy
Admirals Elmo Zumwalt and Worth Bagley charged
...that 'Mr. Woodward and the Post gave great aid
and comfort to the enemy.' The enemy' is perhaps
a slight misnomer.... Rather, in this case 'the
enemy' is an enormously effective, wealthy, ter-
rorist whose hit squads have murdered Libyan
critics abroad, who was responsible for the death
of a policewoman in London and who, by the
Post's own account, 'had formed two new special
operations units to conduct commando and ter-
rorist operations, including one naval unit headed
by a senior aide. Within the last two weeks there
have been intelligence reports that Qaddafi was
targeting the U.S. Embassy in Tunis and the U.S.
ambassador to Tunisia.... '
"Is Woodward's and the Post's decision to
publish the leaked information the result of
overzealous dedication to truth, to that mythical
idol, The Public's Right to Know? I submit that it
is rather a repudiation of genuine ethical standards
in journalism, a lack of concern for national
security, and total disregard for the possibility of
inciting terrorist action."
The next time Nancy meets with Katherine on a
social basis, says one caustic observer, maybe she
should ask Mrs. Graham why her paper is helping
to set up her husband as a target for an assassir
bullet.
Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/11/13: CIA-RDP90-00965R000302480006-2