BOB WOODWARD INTERVIEWED

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000807540017-3
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 24
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 12, 2012
• Sequence Number: 17
• Publication Date: October 13, 1987
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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RADIO N REPORTS, INC.
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PUBLIC AFFAIRS STAFF
Larry King Live
October 13, 1987 9:00 P.M.
SUBJECT Bob Woodward Interviewed
Washington, D.C.
ANNOUNCER: Welcome to Larry King Live. Tonight,
America's toughest reporter, Bob Woodward, lifts the veil on the
inner workings of the CIA. But how secret are they?
Now, here's Larry King.
LARRY KING: It would be an understatement to say that
this book is the most talked about book published in 1987. The
book is "VEIL: The Secret Wars of the CIA." There you see the
cover.
And we welcome to our microphones and cameras its
author, Bob Woodward, investigative reporter for the Washington
Post, assistant managing editor of the investigative staff. His
field is investigative journalism.
Why, by the way, is that your specialty? Why do you
like that the best?
808 WOODWARD: Because it's always fun to find out what
we don't know, what's hidden.
though?
KING: Shouldn't that be what all reporters should be,
WOODWARD: I think they all do. And I have the luxury
of lots of time, lots of patience from my editors at The Post and
at Simon and Schuster, to spend two or three years on a project.
KING: Were you a sleuthy kind of kid? Were you the
kind of kid who, "Nick is late for school today. I wonder why"?
That kind of thing.
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W00DWARD: Yeah, I guess I was. I was the janitor in my
father's law firm. And at night I would go in and read the files
in the attic of his law firm to find out what divorces there were
in town and what was going on. It was quite apparent from
reading those that the public face that you see of these people
is not the real one.
KING: Must -- therefore, can we conclude that the good
investigative journalist, the really good one, there has to be
days he questions his morality?
W00DWARD: No. No. You have to play by the rules and
be absolutely straight with people, because people are going to
come around and ask you, "How did you do this? Is it fair? Did
you let everyone have their side?" And so you can't stray over
the line.
KING: So he doesn't open the mail that's not addressed
W00DWARD: No. Absolutely not. And if I were a janitor
now, I would not read the files in the attic.
KING: Would not.
WOODWARD: I would not.
KING: Isn't that hard, though? Especially when you're
prone to finding out things.
W000WARD: No. Because people like to talk. And if
people didn't like to talk, you'd be out of business and I'd be
out of business.
KING: You learned that a long time ago. Right?
Anybody in the business knows that people like to talk. They'd
rather talk than not talk.
WOODWARD: Absolutely. And what you have to do is be
patient, set up an interview that is open-ended. You never want
to go to an eight o'clock interview and say, "Gee, I have to be
home at ten." You have to sometimes get home at one or two. And
then if you chart the value of that interview, in the last hours
of it you will get the most important information.
KING: And you must listen sympathetically all the time.
Right? If it's Hitler or Roosevelt or Casey, or whatever, you
are an attentive, interested listener.
KING: You can't mock what he says.
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WOODWARD: Of course not. But you can challenge it.
You can say, "Hey, that's not true," or, "So-and-so says this."
This is
opportunity to do
know Casey.
When I
Warren Burger.
Belushi.
the first book that I have had, or had the
with somebody I really got to know. I got to
did the Supreme Court, I really never
I never talked to Nixon. I never met John
KING: That's right. Three of the books you've done,
the most famous of which "The President's Men," you never talked
to the principal person involved.
WOODWARD: Exactly.
KING: Here you did.
W00DWARD: Yes.
KING: Why did he agree?
WOODWARD: Well, I think he realized that the Washington
Post was committed to following the CIA, monitoring the CIA...
KING: Because he knew you were going to do this book,
no matter?
WOODWARD: Well, we were going to follow what was going
on, that it's the hidden of hiddens, the CIA. And it's very,
very important, as we now know, to discover what's happening. So
we were writing regular periodict stories. So he wanted to shape
the story.
Casey, as you know -- you knew him -- amateur historian
all the way...
WOODWARD: ...knew that this book would get a lot of
attention. Knew, as he could tell from my newspaper writing,
that if he wanted to say something, he wanted to make a point, it
would he included in the story. He wouldn't control the story or
dictate it.
to you?
KING: Do you think he told the President he was talking
WOODWARD: Oh, that's a good question. I don't know the
answer to that.
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KING: I mean certainly he wouldn't be the kind of guy
who would want Reagan surprised. So if he had lived, the
President would have known this book was coming, wouldn't he?
Don't you think?
WOODWARD: Oh, they definitely knew the book was coming.
No question about that.
KING: No, I mean from Casey's own lips. He would have
said to him, "I spoke to Woodward."
WOODWARD: I don't know.
KING: Wouldn't you have guessed it?
WOODWARD: I mean one of the things I could really not
penetrate in this book is the full nature of the Casey-Reagan
relationship.
KING: It was not a close friendship, was it?
W0ODWARD: No, it was not. But they were soulmates.
They shared -- you know, of the same generation, two years
difference in their age, had gone through four years; very, very
committed to capitalism; fierce, active anti-communists.
KING: Was this book a Casey book? Was it supposed to
be the CIA through Bill Casey's and Bob Woodward's perspective of
it?
WOODWARD: Well, it started out, it was going to be four
years of the Turner era, Stansfield Turner, who was head of the
CIA under Jimmy Carter; and then it was going to be four years of
Casey. But it became quite apparent that Casey was a dominant
figure in this Administration. I think, as eventually the book
shows, Bill Casey became the shadow Secretary of State. He
outflanked everyone in the Administration, and his -- the
consistent theme in the Administration were his covert wars.
KING: When the question was asked during the Iran-
Contra thing, one of the best questions asked was: If Shultz was
against it and Weinberger was against it -- and they disagree on
everything -- who the heck was for it to get Reagan to go against
both of them? It had to be Casey.
WOODWARD: Oh, indeed Casey.
KING: By mathematics, it had to be.
WOODWARD: The book quotes from memos and various things
that have been out in the hearings and the Tower Report showing
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that -- see, this, the Iran arms sales was made for Casey: hiqh
risk, high gain, doing something, working out a secret deal with
a couple of people who are your implacable enemies.
happened?
KING: His kind of shtick.
WOODWARD: Absolutely. Yes.
KING: Why -- by the way, did you expect the fuss that
W00DWARD: Well, I've never written a book when there
has not been a fuss.
KING: Not this much.
Days ."
WOODWARD: Oh, yeah. Every time. Go back to "The Final
KING: That was show-business fuss.
WOODWARD: No. Big fuss on the Supreme Court. How can
you write about infighting and bickering at the Supreme Court?
I remember very vividly -- I think we did a show on this
when "The Final Days" came out, the book on Nixon's last year in
office. We wrote that Nixon and Kissinger got down on their
knees and prayed.
KING: That's right. Yeah.
WOODWARD: And "Oh, absolutely. You can't know that.
That's" -- you know, "You made that up," and so forth.
KING: All right. But let's say what made this unusual
is your guy was dead.
WOODWARD: Well, Belushi was dead, too.
KING: Belushi was dead. But that was a book -- you
didn't expect Belushi quotes. You started to write it after he
died.
WOODWARD: Yes. That's right.
KING: Would you say that made this significantly
different?
WOODWARD: No. I think it was getting to know Casey.
Casey was one of the most complicated people, not a simple man,
operated on many levels, networked Washington, as you know.
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You were saying earlier that you had lunch with him one
day, and so forth. I mean he dealt with everyone. He knew
everyone.
KING: But he wouldn't go on programs and he wouldn't,
we thought, talk to the press openly. I asked him at the lunch,
"Would you go on?"
He said, "Maybe when this -- when the Administration's
over, I'll sit down with you."
WOODWARD: Well, he knew he wasn't good on television.
He was a kind of disheveled-looking person. He mumbled a lot.
KING: Terrible New York accent.
WOODWARD: But there were lots of reporters in town who
had somewhat similar relationships that I had with Casey.
KING: Oh, really?
WOODWARD: Yes. Oh, sure.
KING: Many spoke to him frequently, then.
WOODWARD: No many, but some.
KING: How about from his New York days, from the
financial press?
WOODWARD: When he was Chairman of the SEC, lots of
people knew him, dealt with him. A lot of people give him very
good marks as SEC Commissioner.
KING: Have you ever had your credibility questioned
this much?
W00DWARD: Always. I remember during Watergate we wrote
those stories, Ron Ziegler took to the podium one day and for 45
minutes called us just about every name in the book.
So, I think when you get at the truth and you scrape
close to the bone, people are going to get mad and start howling.
KING: All right, Bob, how -- and by the way, for our
viewing audience, we're going to be taking your phone calls. And
I might remind you that Bob Woodward is going to be our guest
tonight on radio for two hours, as well. So if you don't get in
here, you can join us later there.
How should we -- there are no footnotes. You don't tell
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us who was your source here and who was your source there. How,
then, should we read it? Is this history? Is this journalism?
Is this a Woodward retrospective? How do we read this book?
WOODWARD: Good question. As I say in the beginning, I
think it's closer to journalism to history, because it's done so
rapidly. But remember, everyone in there is named, situations,
meetings in the White House Situation Room, top secret documents,
secret documents, national intelligence estimates, Casey's
unpublished writings, airplane rides with Casey, dinner with
Casey, and so forth. It's all documented.
No one -- people are trying to say, "How do we get at
this? How do we establish" -- you know, how do we say, "Gee, it
wasn't this bad," are looking for inroads, but they really aren't
finding them.
Mrs. Casey came out and challenged me and said, "You
couldn't have been in the hospital room." She was not there when
I was there. She then, on one television program, said I had
never, never been in the house.
And gently I said, "Don't you remember the time you
served us breakfast?"
And she said, "Oh, yes. I do remember that."
She became, in a way, my best witness.
KING: Do you think she read the book?
WOODWARD: I don't. And I hope she does, because I
think she'd realize, as Bill Safire said, this is a fair portrait
of Bill Casey. It includes all of the dimensions of that very,
very complicated man.
jealousy?
KING: Do you think a lot of the jumping on you is
WOODWARD: No, no. I don't think so. I think I have to
be tested. I go around and work three years on a project like
this and say, "We're going to test the CIA and the government."
I'm going to say, "I found this out." People are perfectly fair
to come at me and say, "Hey, what about this? What about that?"
The people who are in the book, who are alive now, are
coming out and saying, "Yes, that's true."
KING: Stansfield Turner said he was one of your
WOODWARD: He did? I don't know what he said.
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KING: He has admitted that. But obviously he was. He
said it himself.
WOODWARD: Lots of people are saying, "Hey, that's
absolutely right." Some people are even saying that it's eerie.
Al Haig, who was the Secretary of State for Reagan, said on the
issue of how ill Reagan was after the assassination attempt in
'81 -- I write that Reagan for a few days was really in bad
shape. And the people in the White House thought they were going
to be a team of Mrs. Wilsons, taking care of this President. And
Al Haig -- no friend of mine, believe me -- got up and New
Hampshire and said, "If you knew the real story, your hair would
stand on end."
KING: The hospital scene. Much has been paid to it.
They said the reason you had to do it was you had to have
something on the Iran-Contra from Casey. And that, I guess,
those critics are saying that it was fabricated because you won't
say anything about the room. You won't say what color pajamas he
was wearing. And one criticism I read today was, "Who are you
protecting in not saying that?"
WOODWARD: Look, I'm protecting hundreds of sources in
this book. And I'm just not going to go beyond the book.
Anyone I have talked to who has read the book to its
conclusion, seen the cumulative portrait of Casey, the
Administration, the tensions, the fire fights that went on within
the CIA, within the White House, read through the nature of my
relationship with Casey have said of course they understand the
last scene in the book.
Of course I had to include it. It's got it ambiguity.
Personally, to me, it meant a great deal. But he deserved the
last word, and I let him have it.
KING: Any immorality in sneaking into a hospital room
that's not supposed...
W00DWARD: I didn't sneak in. Somebody helped me.
KING: Helped you sneak in.
WOODWARD: No. I did not sneak in. I just didn't.
KING: In other words, the person who helped you had
admittance.
W00DWARD: Somebody helped me get in there. I did not
disguise myself. I did not misrepresent myself. I was always a
gentleman. And I did my job.
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Look, I had worked for the Washington Post for precisely
eleven days -- this was before Watergate, in 1971 -- when I made
my first hospital visit to somebody. It is something a reporter
does. It's difficult. You have to be a gentleman. You have to
go very, very carefully. But sometimes the answers to things are
in hospitals.
KING: Is there ever a morality question to yourself?
Here is a sick man, not supposed to have visitors, brain tumor.
And I'm sneaking in to get an answer.
W00DWARD: Well, I'm not sneaking in. You keep going
back to that. I did not sneak in. If he had said, "Leave." If
I couldn't get in -- I did go one time earlier, as I report in
the book, and they said, "No."
I just -- I think it's, you know, again it's that issue
of let people talk and let people have their say.
If you'd been there you would have said I was doing my
job. I was gentle about it. I -- you know, that's just the
nature of the business. Reporters have to go all kinds of
strange places.
KING: The picture in Newsweek that has Casey sitting
up, and you did not describe him as sitting up on a chair.
Newsweek, I think, has a drawing of him.
WOODWARD: Yes. Some artist did a drawing.
KING: Was that their mistake?
W00DWARD: I don't know. I mean I am not an artist. I
did not do the drawing or talk to the artist.
KING: Because they say they got it from you that he was
sitting up.
WOODWARD: No. They said they talked to somebody in my
office, and I don't know who they talked to in my office.
KING: But you never described him as sitting up.
WOODWARD: That's correct. That's correct. I didn't.
KING: Our quest is Rob Woodward. The book is "VEIL."
This Sunday it'll be number one on the New York Times best seller
list. The subtitle is "The Secret Wars of the CIA." The
publisher is Simon and Schuster.
Back after this.
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PRESIDENT REAGAN: I think that there's an awful lot of
fiction about a man who was unable to communicate at all and is
now being quoted as if he was doing nothing but talk his head
off.
HELEN THOMAS: Well, did you sign a directive that led
to a massacre in Beirut?
PRESIDENT REAGAN: No. And I have a copy of the measure
that I signed.
THOMAS: Can we see it?
PRESIDENT REAGAN: It was -- it was nothing but that we
were all approving a plan requested of us by the government of
Beirut, of Lebanon, I should say, to help them in counter-
terrorism. Never would I sign anything that would authorize an
assassination. I never have and I never will, and I didn't.
KING: That's Ronald Reagan saying, first, fabrications
in the book of a man who can't answer; and two, he never
authorized an assassination, he never signed anything authorizing
an assassination.
WOODWARD: Okay, take the first thing. It's well known
that Casey...
KING: He called you a liar.
WOODWARD: Casey could talk during this period. Senior
officials have been to the Washington Post, said to dozens of
editors and reporters there that Casey was lucid. Time magazine
last week quoted a monsignor by name who visited Casey twice a
week saying Casey could talk. No question that Casey could talk.
The issue of an assassination. I don't say in the book
that the President authorized assassination. Again, something
like this tends to hang on the detail and the specificity. I say
that the President, as he acknowledged in that interview, signed
a top secret order saying that the United States would train
preemptive counterterrorist hit teams. This was rescinded, as
the book reports.
And I think probably the most important disclosure in
the book is that Casey, on his own, frustrated with the terror-
ists, saying, "We've got to fight and hit back," went to the
Saudis and got them to set up an assassination, in which 80
innocent people were killed. That's murder. That's assassin-
ation. It's wrong. And it's against the law of this country.
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KING: Was Casey remorseful?
W00DWARD: I don't know. I think he -- the frustration,
and the book really shows how it mounted over the years. You
remember the Marine bombing when 241 servicemen were killed in
Beirut. It was like a mini-Pearl Harbor in this country. Casey
knew the political ramifications of that. It was an intelligence
failure. He could not stop it.
KING: Do you think Reagan read the book?
WOODWARD: I'm sure he didn't.
KING: Sure he didn't.
WOODWARD: I mean I don't know he didn't. I wish he
would, because I think he might learn about what went wrong. And
it really can't be escaped. And certainly the Iran-Contra affair
demonstrates this. I think the book demonstrates that in many
different additional ways things went wrong. Things happened in
this country. Deception in the whole Contra operation. It
wasn't what they said it was initially. Provocation of Qaddafi.
Horrendously inconsistent policies toward Iran.
KING: It should be understood, Bob, as I know you, you
are not a critique of intelligence, are you?
W00DWARD: No. No. We need the CIA. We've got to have
a strong CIA. We now have a CIA Director, William Webster, who
says we can conduct intelligence operations on the books,
according to the law, according to the principles and values of
this country.
KING: Weren't you in naval intelligence?
WOODWARD: No. I was in naval communications, never did
intelligence work in the Navy.
KING: Would you have liked to?
WOODWARD: Yes, I would. I would have loved to have
seen those reports. I did not.
KING: Were you ever asked to do anything for the CIA?
WOODWARD: No, never.
KING: Do you think a journalist every should?
W00DWARD: No, I don't.
KING: Not ever, not under any circumstances.
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WOODWARD: No. No. I describe an incident in the book
when somebody out at the CIA tried to get me to ask in an
interview I was supposed to have with Muammar Qaddafi, the Libyan
leader, to ask him a question about not sleeping. And I thin
they were trying to get my questions to provoke Qaddafi.
KING: I want to ask you about Casey the man in a
moment. But let's get some calls in.
Houston, Texas for Bob Woodward. Hello.
MAN: ...Why didn't you ask Reagan -- excuse me. Why
didn't you ask Casey, rather than Casey knowing, if Reagan knew
about the funds diversion?
Second of all, do you think Reagan knew about the funds
diversion?
And third, will we ever find out who Deep Throat is?
WOODWARD: Okay. As the book describes it, after Casey
said he believed, he fell asleep. And there was no opportunity
to ask him the question about the President or to ask the other
hundred or two hundred questions I had.
KING: Do you believe the President knew?
WOODWARD: I don't know the answer to that. I think you
can make a strong argument that Casey would have beat a path over
to the Oval Office to tell him about this great thing, as Ollie
North put it, that we're getting the Ayatollah to give money to
the Contras. I think you can also make an argument that Casey
believed in insulation and deniability, and he wouldn't tell the
President.
KING: When Deep Throat dies, will we know who Deep
Throat is?
WOODWARD: Yes, you will.
KING: You will tell us?
WOODWARD: Yes.
KING: Is Deep Throat older than you?
WOODWARD: [Laughter] I'm just going to leave
undescribed.
KING: Is Deep Throat in good health, to your knowledge?
WOODWARD: [Laughter] Is he in the hospital, and would
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I visit him in the hospital? The answer is yes.
KING: Woodland Hills, California. Hello.
MAN: I'm wondering if Mr. Woodward has found any
evidence, as has been alleged, of cocaine trafficking or
smuggling, or funding for the Contra efforts in Nicaragua.
WOODWARD: It's a good question. And I have asked about
it, and in fact asked Casey about it, and he denied it. And
others have denied it. I don't have a final answer on that. But
no evidence at this point.
KING: Why would Casey tell you the truth if he did do
WOODWARD: One of the things Casey found in dealing with
me, when I called him up or went to see him and had some
questions about something, generally I had most of the story.
For example, in "VEIL" I describe, in 1985, when I learned about
the covert operation to undermine the Libyan government. We
were going to run that story on Sunday. Saturday afternoon I
called Casey and I said, "We're running this story. We're not
going to give operational details. We're running it because we
think it's important. As you know, we're going" -- we cover the
CIA. There was a big struggle within the Administration, within
the Senate and House Intelligence Committees about whether this
would work, about whether it would be assassination, whether we
were really trying to kill Qaddafi, which again is against the
President's executive order.
He said, "Oh, some others wouldn't run it."
And I said, "We feel we have to."
He made a few points. He said, "We're not trying to
kill Qaddafi. We're trying to stop terrorism."d
So, I included that in the story. I just, you know,
dealt with him that way: Hey, we're going to do this, we're
going to do that. Or what about this?
KING: Has anyone -- Charlie Wick was Casey's best
WOODWARD: One of his good friends.
KING: Has anyone asked Charlie Wick about this?
W00DWARD: I haven't heard. I haven't heard.
KING: ...call Charlie Wick and say -- you know, Wick
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would have been aware all the time of your talking to Casey,
because Casey would have told him that.
WOODWARD: Well, you ought to go around, or somebody
might want to go around and ask all the people who Casey called
up, or when they called Casey, and said, "Oh, yeah. Talk to
Woodward."
KING: To Ruidoso, New Mexico for Bob Woodward. The
book is "VEIL." Hello.
MAN: ...Mr. Woodward could increase his credibility
with me and a lot of other people if he'd take a lie-detector
test on your show in front of his peers. Number one, would he
agree to this? And if he wouldn't, why not agree to it? I got a
hunch he would've blown it up tonight.
WOODWARD: Other people have asked that question. I'd
just -- there's too much evidence that lie-detector tests don't
work, one way or the other. And I really think if anyone reads
this book to the end, they will be able to form their own
judgment. And I've not found anyone who's read it to the end who
doesn't say...
KING: How about a top guy like Warren Holmes in Miami,
a famous lie-detector guy who courts trust and everybody trusts,
and is a guy who, you know, they claim both sides in cases always
agree upon? If Holmes says it, it's a given.
WOODWARD: But as you know, there's so much evidence and
information that they don't work.
KING: He did me on television. It worked with me.
WOODWARD: But that was a gag.
KING: Well, no. He asked me certain questions. I
answerd. He told me when I was lying.
today?
But you don't have to, Bob.
By the way, movie rights sold for a million dollars
WOODWARD: I guess so. Yes.
KING: That was reported today.
WOODWARD: Yes.
KING: They're going to make a movie of this.
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WOODWARD: They're going to make a miniseries,
apparently eight hours, MGM/United Artists.
KING: Who's going to play Casey?
WOODWARD: Don't know. But what I think they will do is
they see from reading the book -- and when they do one of these
miniseries, they kind of take it apart in the scenes, in the
evolution, and they will show Casey as an American George Smylie,
to a certain extent.
KING: We'll pick that up in a moment.
KING: Our guest is Bob Woodward. The book is "VEIL:
The Secret Wars of the CIA." This Sunday it'll be number one on
the New York Times best seller list. We'll continue with your
phone calls. We're also going to talk about Bill Casey.
Did you like him?
WOODWARD: In many ways, I did. Yes. And you had to
have a certain respect for him. He taught me some things. One
of the things he taught me, which I kind of new as a reporter,
was go to the scene. Don't sit in the office and phone people
up. Get out there and talk to him.
In the book describe in some detail trips he made to
Central America, to Africa, to the Middle East, to Asia.
KING: He wasnt' a desk man.
WOODWARD: He was not a desk man. He was get out there,
shake ever operations officer's hand, ask him a question. If
somebody asked him a question or he wanted to pursue what -- you
know, it wasn't pro forma. He would sit and look people in the
eye.
KING: But as your title states, he was running secret
wars. You're not supposed to do that.
WOODWARD: Well, some of the secret wars were author-
ized. Some of them were not. Some of them were done by the
rules. Some of them were done off the books.
But the significance of it, I think, is when you look
back at the whole six-year period, you will see that he was one
of the primary makers of foreign policy. And there are a lot of
really experienced, dedicated CIA intelligence people, State
Department people who say the CIA shouldn't make policy.
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KING: He must have been a thorn to the Shultzes and the
Weinbergers, the Shultzes especially. He didn't like Shultz.
WOODWARD: I think they were friends initially, but then
I think Shultz came to realize -- I know Shultz came to realize
that Casey was stealing the thunder. They had some very, very
bad face-offs. And at one point, finally, Casey wrote the
President a letter and said, "You've got to get rid of George
Shultz ."
KING: His biggest weakness?
WOODWARD: His biggest weakness was that he was sure he
was right. One of the things Casey said to me a number of times
-- I'd say, "Well, now wait a minute. Let's look at the Contra
war. Let's look at the Cuban menace in the Caribbean. What's
the evidence?" And we would go through some evidence.
And he sould say, "Well, the Soviets are putting four
billion dollars a year into the Caribbean. And we, the United
States -- it's our hemisphere -- we're putting in much less."
I'd say, "Well, four billion dollars, I'd say, "Well,
that number's flakey. It's an estimate. It's a guess."
And then you would kind of go along with him, and he
would say, "But you have to make a judgment. You have to decide.
You've got this and you've got this. And if you sit on the
fence, you will not be a man of action."
KING: He couldn't have been a fan of Stansfield Turner,
W00DWARD: No. I think he felt that Turner -- too much
hand-wringing, too much doubt, too much hesitation.
Casey's philosophy was -- and he finally wrote it in a
credo that he put out, like a little brochure, handed out to
everyone at the CIA, called "The CIA Credo." He said, "We must
have a propensity for action." What did that mean? If in doubt
about doing something or nothing, do it. And his philosophy was
you're going to take some hits, you're going to make some
mistakes. There are going to be some bad things. You're going
to have -- somebody with lots of ideas is going to have some good
ones and some bad ones. He was willing to deal with the mistakes
and the bad.
KING: When Judge Sporkin
left
as his attorney to become
-- to be appointed to the federal
bench,
and then eventually to
get on to the bench, I went to
the
ceremonies in which Mr.
Sporkin left. And this is a guess
now.
I don't know if it's
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your guess. I guessed from that that Casey, who presided over a
wonderful breakfast for about a hundred people, was very popular
inside that building.
WOODWARD: Oh, yeah. And the book shows that. I mean
they absolutely loved him. When Reagan won the election in 1980,
beat Carter, which would mean that Turner was out, it was like
Liberation Day in Paris. People were almost hanging out the
windows.
KING: But Casey especially. They liked Casey.
WOODWARD: Sure. Because Casey will go around and say,
"Do it. Take chances."
In doing the research on this book, in going through all
the interviews and the documents, really going into this dark,
hidden world, I developed a lot of respect for intelligence
officers. Your job is easy, my job is easy compared to what they
do. Their life is on the line.
KING: No credit.
WOODWARD: Frequently they don't get credit. And you're
dealing, as people have said, in a world of smoke and mirrors.
But I think it's even worse. I think it's a world of darkness.
I think it's off in a world of absolute contradiction.
KING: Meaning?
WOODWARD: Meaning that you've got a pile of evidence
over here that says this and a pile of evidence over here that
says that.
Example: One of the most crucial issues of our time,
arms control. Are the Soviets sincere or are they cheaters?
Casey believed that the Soviets are cheaters. When you put the
evidence on the table to the professional analysts, a lot of them
will say they really aren't cheating in a serious way, that the
Soviet policy is not to cheat. Others will say but there's this
and there's that.
When they issue a formal report in the intelligence
agencies, it's called a couple of things: an NIE, National
Intelligence Estimate; or a SNIE, S-N-I-E, Special National
Intelligence Estimate. Estimate. That means they don't know.
To a certain extent, it's a guess.
KING: Is LeCarre right? Is a lot of it spies who came
in from the cold, too?
WOODWARD: Yeah. And it's a hard life. It's a dirty
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life. And, you know, we hire those people and we pay them to do
our dirty work.
KING: And then we don't want to know about it.
WOODWARD: Well, I think we've got to know about it.
KING: Nashville -- yeah, I know what you mean.
Nashville, Tennessee, with Bob Woodward. The book is
"VEIL." Hello.
MAN: ...I'm just curious about one thing, Mr. Woodward.
How far do you feel that investigative reporters, such as
yourself, should go in withholding information so as maybe to
exploit it for your own personal gain? And exactly what degree
of responsibility do you have to report news as it happens? Or
are you, yourself, one of the great manipulators?
KING: You mean like in holding it for the book.
WOODWARD: I think that's in question. I think we have
an obligation to publish as soon as we can. At the same time,
some things belong in books. And some of the important stories
in this book were not really confirmed until this summer. And
Simon and Schuster published this book -- you know, from writing
books -- on really a miracle schedule. I finished it in August.
It was published in September.
When did you finish your book and when was it published?
KING: I finished my book Labor Day. It will be
published April 15th.
W00DWARD: So mean this...
KING: That's about six months, is fast.
W00DWARD: Six months is fast. Four months is almost
unheard of. One month, I don't think it's ever been duplicated.
And they said, "We need to get this out."
To answer the caller's question, I don't think there's
ever a justification for withholding information. And this has
not been any attempt to exploit it or hold things back.
Right?
KING: But The Post did not print the hospital story.
WOODWARD: It certainly did, as one of the excerpts that
we printed from the book.
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KING: But they didn't the day it happened.
WOODWARD: That's right, for this chief reason: I hoped
to go back. There were lots of questions I wanted to ask Casey.
It was a period when he was getting better. He did not get
better. He took several turns for the worse, and eventually died
in May.
KING: Our guest is Bob Woodward. The book is "VEIL."
Back with more calls after these words.
KING: Our guest is Bob Woodward, and the book is
"VEIL." And we go to Woodland Hills, California.
MAN: ...Your guest this evening must think that your
viewers are stupid. To suggest that William Casey, the Director
of the CIA for the United States, is going to sit down with him
and discuss the Contra affair or discuss affairs of critical
interest to the United States, does he expect us to take him
seriously?
W00DWARD: The answer is yes. And look, it's a matter
of record. No one is, when you really get down to this,
disputing it. Even people in the CIA who are the angriest at me
say the only way to get to the number of 48 meetings I had with
Casey is to include some discussions at cocktail parties. I
specifically say in the book that some of those meetings were at
cocktail parties in the corner.
And you know from your experience, sometimes you can
have the best discussions with people at a cocktail party. It's
just a matter of...
KING: If you ask the right question, you can learn
WOODWARD: Much more. It's not a matter of that being
the truth in Washington, that's the truth everywhere in the
country, everywhere in the world.
They have said, Mrs. Casey said there are six documented
meetings at the CIA Headquarters in his office.
KING: Based on the tenor of the last caller, why do you
think people are so mad at you? Why are we mad at the messenger?
WOODWARD: Well, I think there's a tendency to do that,
and I can understand that. I also think that there are a lot of
people who don't want to face what went on, that we've had a
difficult period in this country: Vietnam, Watergate, the first
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CIA investigations of the '70s, the Iran-Contra affair now, that
all raise very fundamental questions about: Is our government
honest? Are they doing what they say? Are they explaining
themselves in a straightforward way? And every time you come
around and peel a little bit of the layer away and say, "Here we
go again," I think the average citizen's first reaction is going
to be, "Oh, God. Tell me, somehow, that it's not true."
The problem is that it is true. And the problem is that
we do have to face it.
KING: Sarasota, Florida for Bob Woodward. Hello.
WOMAN: ...I'm so honored to be able to have the
opportunity to ask a question of Bob Woodward. First I'd like to
say all the fiction seems to me to have already occurred under
the current Administration. I also want to say that Bob Woodward
is a great writer, a tribute to journalism, and surely a friend
to the American people.
KING: I didn't know your mother lived in Sarasota.
Go ahead, ma'am.
WOMAN: My question is, what ever happened, indeed, to
that ten million dollars that got switched around by Ollie North?
KING: Yeah. Where is that money?
W00DWA.RD: That's a good question.
KING: Great question.
W00DWARD: And what the Iran-Contra Committees
established is that it got into the wrong bank account, and
apparently it was just sitting there.
KING: In somebody's -- whose...
WOODWARD: And they hope to get some of this money back.
KING: I mean that's a nice error.
WOODWARD: Yes, that is a nice error. Like Monopoly,
bank error in your favor, ten million dollars. But it was some
unknown business.
KING: And it's there now?
WOODWARD: But the important issue here is when you take
all the meticulous work that those committees did and you look at
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it, you find out that in the Iran arms sales, there was eight
million dollars left over in their own bank account that didn't
go to the Contras, that didn't go to some of these other
off-the-books operations.
Now think about it. Step back for a minute. What the
hell is our government, people on the White House staff in charge
of a slush fund of eight million dollars in a Swiss bank acount?
I remember Watergate in great detail. In the safe in
Rose Mary Woods' office, in the other slush funds that they had
in the Nixon reelection committee, they never had eight million
dollars. And if you remember back in the '70s, there was a
feeling when we first wrote those stories, "Oh, come on. That
can't be true. No one would" -- you know, "This is the govern-
ment." But it's all true. And now we have an eight million
dollar slush fund.
KING: New Orleans. Hello.
WOMAN: Mr. Woodward, I wonder if you intended for this
to topple the government, as Watergate did.
And in reference to withholding information, as we
understand it down here, you withheld information in reference to
Gary Hart. Would you please expand on it?
And I thank you.
KING: Okay.
WOODWARD: To deal with the issue of Gary Hart. I never
withheld any information on Gary Hart at all.
KING: He lived at your place for a while.
WOODWARD: Well, before...
KING: That was generally known.
WOODWARD: Yes, it was well known. And the editors at
The Post knew it. In the late '70s, I believe it was 1979, while
he was a senator, way before he was running for President, he
called me up one day, a man in distress, and said, "I need a
place to stay."
I was a bachelor at the time, have a big house here in
Washington. I talked to the editor at the Post. I said, "What
do I do?"
And he said, "Well, you know, you kind of have to extend
a hand to people."
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KING: And he was separated from his wife at the time.
W00DWARD: Separating from his wife. He stayed there
longer than he intended, and he came back a second time.
But I never withheld any information. That's just not
KING: Were you out to topple the Reagan Administration
with this book?
W00DWARD: No. Absolutely not.
KING: If you read the book, you know it's not.
W00DWARD: In fact, you know, it is, to a certain extent
-- it's not the opposite, but it is to say, "Hey, look. Here it
is. Here is what went off the track."
KING: It's no big anti-CIA book, though.
W000WARD: No, not at all. I don't think so.
KING: There are a lot of conservative or right-wing
element in this country jumping on you before the fact here.
W00DWARD: And then some...
KING: They haven't read it.
WOODWARD: And then some of the right-wing -- Edward J.
Epstein just came out with a piece saying this is an incredibly
important book, that it shows about the political struggle for
intelligence operations that was going on, and that that is a
very, very important struggle.
KING: In a moment we'll discuss, maybe, the
unanswerable, the "What's it all about, Alfie" vis-a-vis the guy
on the street, the bus driver in Hialeah. What does this mean to
him?
Our guest, Bob Woodward. The book, "VEIL: The Secret
Wars of the CIA."
KING: Our guest, Bob Woodward. He'll be with us in a
little over an hour on the radio tonight.
Springfield, Massachusetts. Hello.
WOMAN: What I'd like to know is why didn't Mr. Woodward
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inform the Iran-Contra Committee members that he had this
information from Casey in January? Because Casey didn't die till
May.
WOODWARD: First of all, a reporters job is not to work
for a congressional investigating committee. Those investigating
committees are still in operation. They have not finished their
report. We got the book out.
KING: I want to ask you that question. Let me get one
more call.
Johnstown, Pennsylvania. Last call. Hello.
MAN: ...I have not heard about how Mr. Casey's brain
tumor affected him. Can you give any evidence, have you talked
with any medical authorities how this affected him in recent
years, as your interviews with him?
KING: Good question.
WOODWARD: I'm not a doctor. I have talked to some
people about this. The conversation we had before the hospital
visit, in December of 1986, which was before his brain tumor,
before he had this seizure in mid-December, he was very, very
lucid. I called him up at the CIA. I think this is the time he
was eating lunch when we were talking, and I was asking him some
tough questions about this. And he finally said to me -- and
this is what made me think that he was quite well and in control
of what was going on. He said, "I wouldn't have your job for all
the money in the world. You're destined to only be right some of
the time."
KING: What do we make of it? What effect on us, as a
WOODWARD: I think one of the things that -- if you look
at what people are interested in, just the average person on the
streets in some city, they are interested in economic well-being,
some spiritual well-being, a good life, and also peace, that
we're not at war, covertly or overtly. And the CIA is the ears
and eyes and the thinker, the thinkers of our national security
apparatus. They're out there to stop war, to give us warning of
it's going to happen, to give the President...
KING: Are you saying, "Sleep well tonight. The CIA is
out there"?
WOODWARD: Well, I'm saying that...
KING: That's what we want.
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WOODWARD: The CIA can also get us in real big trouble
if they're wrong, if there's a political spin on what they're
doing, if they're not up to the task, if they don't realize that
the chickens come home to roost in this country; that if you
break the law and break the rules or say, "To hell with the
Constitution," that the people are not going to tolerate that.
The point is, you want the CIA watched, like you want
the State Department watched, like you want the Congress
watched, like you want the press watched. We're watched all the
time, and we should be. You want the CIA watched. We can't kind
of walk away from it and say, "Better not to know."
KING: That's a big mistake.
WOODWARD: Terrible mistake.
KING: We're always better served knowing.
WOODWARD: Yeah. And we can fix things. We can fix
thinqs quite fast in this country.
KING: Working
Right?
WOODWARD: Not yet.
KING: You going to take a little back from this.
WOODWARD: Take a little?
KING: Step back a little.
W00DWARD: Well, no. I'm sure I'll be working on
another book soon. But it's all selecting the topic. And in
selecting the topic on this, I got onto it early, really, in '84,
after some meetings and discussions with Casey, discussions with
other people. And it was obvious that this guy was head and
shoulders above everyone else in the Administration.
KING: See you in an hour.
W00DWARD: Thanks.
KING: Bob Woodward. He'll be with us in one hour on
the Larry King Show on Mutual Radio.
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