VEIL: AN INTERVIEW W/SOPHIA AND BERNADETTE CASEY

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP99-00418R000100050036-8
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 12
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: May 11, 2012
• Sequence Number: 36
• Publication Date: September 9, 1988
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
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STAT
RADIO N REPORTS, ~N~.
4701 WILLARD AVENUE, CHEVY CHASE, MARYLAND 20815 [phone]
FoR PUBLIC AFFAIRS STAFF
PROGRAnn Larry King Live
September 9, 1988 8:00 PM
Washington , DC
SUBJECT VEIL: An Interview w/ Sophia and Bernadette Casey
ANNOUNCER: Welcome to Larry King Live. Tonight:
BOB WOODWARD: I was somebody who had met and talked
with Casey dozens of times.
ANNOUNCER: Sophia Casey, widow of CIA Director Wilms
Casey, answers the charges....
LARRY KING: Good evening on this Friday night in
Washington .
In his book VEIL: The Secret Wars of the CIA,
Watergate sleuth, investigative journalist Bob Woodward, who was
on this show on Wednesday night, claimed the late William Casey,
Director of the CIA, confessed he knew of events that led to the
Iran-contra affair. He further claimed that this interchange
took place during the last of 48 interviews with Casey and that
it took place at Casey's sick bed in his hospital room shortly
before he died.
In Woodward's interview earlier this week, he stood
firmly by that story.
WOODWARD: Oh, it's the easiest thing in the world....
KING: To break into a hospital and through security....
WOODWARD: You don't have to break -- you don't have to
break in. You just have to walk in. And remember, I was not a
guy who just came in off the street and said, gee, I'd like to
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visit this room. I was somebody who had met and talked with
Casey dozens of times, somebody known quite well to the people
who were security guards and other aides.
KING: But Woodward's allegations were met with
skepticism by some and fury by others. William Casey's widow,
Sophia, and her daughter, Bernadette Casey Smith, have requested
that their side of the story be told, and they are both with us
on Larry King Live at our studios here in Washington. On your
left is the daughter of the late Bill Casey, Bernadette Casey
Smith, and Bill's widow, Sophia Casey.
It's interesting before we even talk about that. Bill
Casey, posthumously, has a book coming out. And while Woodward's
book's called VEIL: The Secret Wars of the CIA, Bill Casey's
book is The Secret War A ainst Hitler. And it's published by
Raggerny-Gateway ? And is this just out?
BERNADETTE CASEY SMITH: May. It'll come out in May.
KING: What -- how -- why didn't it come out sooner?
SMITH: All right, I'll tell you. Dad wrote this book
ten years ago. He wrote it before -- it was completed before he
went into the primary for Reagan. But he decided that since he
was in the government, it wasn't proper for him to put out a
book, especially about intelligence. So he kept it. And it is
his story of the OSS, which is the forerunner of the CIA. And it
is a very, very important book, because it tells the importance
of intelligence and how intelligence during the Second World War
saved lives and shortened the war. It's a fascinating, wonderful
book. And it's interesting because Dad, being an intelligence
man, never talked intelligence at home. So it's really a story
that I never heard before.
KING: And the similarity in titles is just that, a
coincidence?
KING' When -- Sophiaq when Bob Woodward's book came out
-- I don't want to put words in your mouth -- were you shocked?
SOPHIA CASEY: No, I wasn't shocked, because I know how
Bob writes. I was shocked. Larry, when I came home from Florida
and saw a headline in the Post this big: "Casey Gives a Deathbed
Confession." I knew right then. I said to myself I have to do
something. The very next morning I called a television station.
I said I want to get on, and I want to correct that . because I
know he lied about that. He never could get into that hospital.
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KING Were you shocked?
SMITH Oh, well, first of all, not by the book, because
Bob Woodward told Dad he was writing a book. But he was writing
a book of a 40 year retrospect a 40 year history of the CIA. Of
course....
KING; You mean he lied to your father?
SMITH; Yes. he lied to my father: he lies in the book.
He got away with it for years. But this time he's not getting
away with it,
KING: Are you saying, Bernadette, that your father was
meeting with him, talking with him about a history he was doing?
SMITH: No. Dad -- there -- you know, when we first saw
this deathbed confession, it was something that, you know, was
shocking, because Mom and I know it couldn't possibly happen. He
couldn't get into the room. There was security. There was us.
And my father couldn't talk. So I mean the whole thing is
ludicrous, and it's downright atrocious.
But he told Dad that he was doing a 40 year retrospect.
So Dad said you can talk to a few people, and he told other
people he was doing a 40 year retrospect. If Dad didn't die,
there was no way -- there was absolutely no way that that book
could have come out the way it came out. It wasn't the same
story. He couldn't publish that story if Bill Casey was alive.
And without the end of the book, there's no story.
KING: Did he, did Bill meet with Woodward a lot?
CASEY: He said 48 times, but that's not true either.
Whenever we'd see Bob at social events, we always -- he always
work up to us and say hello, and, you know, Bill'd say "How is
the book? How are things? How are you, Bob?" And it was just a
friendly, casual meeting. We were not friends. We were not
enemies either. We were just casual acquaintances.
KING: Now the other night when Bob was on this program,
and VEIL is now out in paperback, we discussed that hospital
scene again. Your ire got all up again, right?
CASEY: Yes. Yes. I think -- I can't get over the
arrogance of him, of starting this lie all over again. It's just
to sell books; that's all.
KING: And someone would say, Bernadette, maybe the
strategy should be just forget it; live with your memory.
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CASEY: Because it's too important....
SMITH: We can't forget it.
CASEY: Bill Casey was a wonderful man.
KING: He sure was.
CASEY: He built up the CIA. And this fellow, Bob
Woodward, is pulling him down, saying he was involved -- saying,
getting words out of a terribly sick man, that he had something
to do with the Iran-contra thing. And I know as time goes on , I
know that he had nothing to do with that.
KING: But yet he was mentioned in the hearings. It
wasn't just Bob Woodward. I mean don't you agree that your Dad
has become a convenient scapegoat for a lot of people?
SMITH: Yes, a scapegoat. I do. I do.
CASEY: True.
KING: I mean Ollie North said....
SMITH: It's interesting. There's a Time magazine
interview with Dad that came out -- well, it was given on Friday,
December 12th. Dad had a seizure on Monday. And he went through
it. And he said he had no knowledge of the diversion of funds.
I'll tell you one thing. My father never -- I never
caught my father in telling me an untruth. And....
KING: He may not tell you everything. But if he told
you something....
SMITH: If he told me, it was true. Exactly. Exactly.
CASEY: That's right. He was too good of an intelli-
gence man to make that mistake.
SMITH: Well, you know what? First thing, the
Iran-contra affair was a very poor intelligence maneuver. My
father would never do that. He was too smart.
CASEY: He was too smart an intelligence man.
KING: Our guests are Bernadette Casey Smith and Sophia
Casey, the daughter and widow of the late Bill Casey. Bill's
book, posthumously, The Secret War Against Hitler, is also out.
This is Larry King Live. We're going to include your phone calls
as well. We'll be right back.
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KING: Our guests are Bernadette Casey Smith, the
daughter of the late William Casey, and Sophia Casey, his widow.
We're going to take some calls as well. We're also going to meet
Joseph Heller tonight. This is Larry King Live in Washington.
I know it's probably painful, but it's also essential to
the other side of the story, what the last few days were like in
that hospital. It was Georgetown Hospital, right? Was it
Georgetown?
SMITH: That wasn't the last few days. He got home to
Long Island....
KING: He died on Long Island?
SMITH: On Long Island, right.
KING: Bob Woodward says the scene occurred in what
hospital? Georgetown?
SMITH: Georgetown.
CASEY: Georgetown.
KING: Yeah. So therefore he died a little while after
that. But that was not a deathbed thing.
CASEY: No.
CASEY: No. No.
KING: Okay. You're saying that....
SMITH: That was January. He died in May.
KING: Okay. That was January.
SMITH: Well, I guess. I don't know. He tried once in
January. January 21st he tried.
KING: To get in.
SMITH: To get in. And he just tried to push himself
in; you know, "I'm Bob Woodward; I can go any place." Of course,
the security said "No way." And they turned him away. After
that, they beefed up security, and they had twice as many people,
with two checkpoints, and Mom and I were in the room all the
time. There's no way he got into that room.
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KING: Another thing. Did I see somewhere where you
said he didn't -- he couldn't have spoken any way.
CASEY: No, he couldn't. He couldn't.
KING: Because he didn't speak.
CASEY: He didn't speak. I mean he was paralyzed on one
side. His tongue was paralyzed on that side. He couldn't hear
from that side. He could not -- there was no way he could talk
with Bob Woodward. Never.
SMITH: He tried to speak. You couldn't understand.
You know, it just got jumbled up, and you couldn't understand it.
And it was infuriating for him, because he thought he was telling
you what he wanted to tell you, but you could not understand.
And Mom and I probably could understand better than anyone,
because we spent our days and nights there.
KING: Was he in a lot of pain?
CASEY: Very much. But I guess he was sedated a lot.
But with that sickness, you get a lot of pain.
KING: He was a fighter. They say you die the way you
live. Did he go out fighting?
SMITH: I never thought he was going to die.
CASEY: We never thought he was going to die. We
thought he would be stricken, but we never thought he was going
to die. And the doctor told us when he did die, he said "Your
husband died with great dignity." So he tried to live. He
really tried until the last two days where I think he kind of
gave up. So many things went wrong. But before that, he really
tried, tried to do. Anything you asked him to do he did with a
smile.
KING: Before we start the calls, wasn't he -- wouldn't
he know that Bob Woodward, just knowing Bob Woodward, is not
going to do a 40 year history of the CIA?
SMITH: No, my father was an optimist.
CASEY: Yeah, he would believe anybody. If Bob said
that, he would believe him.
SMITH: My father doesn't lie. So he thinks Bob
Woodward doesn't lie.
KING: In other words, he wasn't cynical about it?
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CASEY: No. No.
SMITH: He wasn't a cynical man.
KING: To Atlanta, Georgia. Hello.
CALLER: Yes. Have you taken any legal action against
Woodward, or are you all planning on a follow-up book on
Woodward's book? Thank you.
KING: Okay.
CASEY: Well, no, we're not taking any legal action.
But we have a book that Bill Casey just had published called The
Secret War Against Hitler.
KING: Did you ever consider legal action, or is it a
case not winnable because what are the damages?
SMITH: Exactly- First of all, the story that Dad could
not speak and could not get into the hospital [sic] would take
maybe five pages. 25 at the most. The other things, the other
lies that Bob Woodward dug from the book are very damaging to our
national security. I don't think it makes any sense whatsoever
to rehash the lies that he -- he did the damage already. He put
wedges between our friends. And without friends in this world
and colleagues, you don't have a system.
CASEY: Excuse
me, Bernadette. And he disgraced
Bill
Casey. I mean Bill Casey
was field in such high esteem all
over
the intelligence world.
And this jerk came in and had to,
you
know, create this lie,
which wasn't true. And it was
just
KING: All right, let's -- what? We're going to take a
break and come back with more calls. We're going to hold Sophia
Casey and Bernadette Casey Smith. If we can measure a man by how
his family loves him after he dies, Bill Casey was a man! Back
after these words.
KING: Our guests are Bernadette Casey Smith and Sophia
Casey. By the way, Sophia recently donated $155,000 to the
Nicaraguan Resistance Education Foundation . The grant is from
the William Casey Freedom Fighter Fund, presented on behalf of
the Nicaraguan War Handicap Project.
We go to Atlanta, Georgia. Hello.
CALLER: Yes. I want to ask Mrs. Casey, is it true
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about Donald Regan's statement that he was asked by Nancy Reagan
to get rid of -- to fire your husband while he was lying in the
hospital?
CASEY: Gee, I can't answer that. I really don't know.
KING: Were you shocked by Donald's book?
CASEY: I read it in the book. Sure, I was shocked.
But I don't know if it's true or not.
KING: Did you like the book, or didn't like the book?
CASEY: The book was all right. It wasn't very
interesting to me.
KING: Did you read it?
SMITH: I didn't read it.
KING: We go to Dallas, Texas. Hello.
CALLER: Hello.
KING: Yes.
CALLER: I would like to say that I think Bill Casey was
one of our greatest men ever in our history. And I also thought,
and there's no doubt, that the author of that book -- I can't
think of his name -- was lying about him. But was North -- you
all think that North, Colonel North was lying about him when he
said Bill Casey was involved?
CASEY: Well, I don't know how he meant that. I think
-- I think Ollie used to go up and talk to Bill and tell him all
his troubles. But Bill Casey was not involved in the Iran-contra
affair. That was done by the National Security Council. And
that was their job, and they did it, and he had nothing to do
with it. He would not do anything illegal.
KING: North implicated him, didn't he?
SMITH: I was told....
CASEY: Go ahead.
KING: Go ahead.
SMITH: I was told my father would never cross lines
into another agency. Now I don't know that firsthand. I don't
think Dad would give orders to the NSC. First of all, it was
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against the law because of the Boland Amendment. My father was
one of the best lawyers around. He knew the law; he loved the
law; he respected the law, and he wouldn't cross....
KING: The lady, then, has a valid question. If you're
angry at Woodward, justiably angry, you should be a little angry
at Ollie North too.
SMITH: Well, I think probably North and Dad talked. I
think maybe North might have read too much into what Bill Casey
said. Now one thing North said, and I know it just can't be
true. I just know it in my heart it can't be true. The
off-the-shelf CIA. My father would never talk about that. But
he might have said, "My goodness, I wish I didn't have to talk to
Congress," you know....
SMITH: ...or "I wish we didn't have to do this." But
to set up another CIA is ludicrous; it's ridiculous.
CASEY: Bill Casey had no -- as time goes on, I
understand that Billy Casey had nothing to do with Iran-contra
affair.
KING: To the wake. But I mean he wasn't the kind of
guy that....
CASEY: No.
KING: ...Bill was on the phone with a lot.
CASEY: Oh, no, no, no.
SMITH: I understand also that in the journals -- now
this is secondhand knowledge too -- that Bill Casey's name isn't
mentioned much. But you know, I don't know. So that's a fact we
don't really know. So how can we fight something we don't know.
The death scene we know never happened. It's a total, outrageous
lie. Complete. And without that last scene, there's no book.
What does that book have? It's rehashed news stories, hearsays.
Many of the people who were interviewed said, well, you know, I
talked to him, but nothing we talked about is in the book.
There's something that was in the newspapers that he wrote about,
and he got it all wrong any way. I mean there's no book.
There's nothing new but that last scene.
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KING: We go to Sparta, Tennessee. Hello.
CALLER: With all due respect to you ladies, since Mr.
Casey was intelligent and secretive enough to be head of the CIA,
do you really think he would tell you of this book and of his
visitors while he was in the hospital?
SMITH: But the thing is that we were in the hospital 24
hours a day. He couldn't be there.
KING: Somebody is not telling the truth, right? Now
obviously about that last two days in the hospital, somebody is
not telling the truth.
CASEY: That day, whatever it was, that he supposedly
got through.
KING: You never saw him in the hospital room.
CASEY: Oh, no. No. Neither did security. They saw
him come in once, and they chased him. And then they watched for
him very, very carefully. Never saw him again.
SMITH: And then it was interesting. He wanted to put
that story in The Washington Post, and his editor said "No, it's
too flimsy; there's nothing to it. We can't print that." So
even The Washington Post didn't believe him. He said nobody else
contradicted him. Why, his own paper wouldn't print the story.
Supposedly he wanted to have it printed, and they said no.
KING: Is it -- "weird" is the wrong word. Sophia,
there's an anger you have for someone who is not here to respond
for himself.
KING: And that has to be unusually kind of painful. I
mean it's sort of a surrogate pain you're carrying, right?
You're carrying the pain of a memory.
CASEY: That's right. But that has nothing to do with
me standing up and saying....
KING: Yes, but is it possible that Bill may have done
things that you didn't know about?
SMITH: He did things I didn't know about. But I know
he didn't do anything against the law. I know that.
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CASEY: He wouldn't do anything against the law.
SMITH: He wouldn't do it. He had too much respect for
CASEY: Why should he get into the Iran-contra affair?
KING: How do you react to this whole thing that
happened since he died? People thought he didn't die. There
were all these kinds of things. And I think a lot about what the
family thinks when they hear these kinds of jokes. Bill Casey's
on the phone. You had to hear that.
SMITH: Mom was watching television when Dan Rather got
on the tube and was -- I think it was with Bill Colby,
ex-Director of the CIA -- and said, "Well, you know, Bill Casey
isn't dead, and he's, you know, someplace else." And Bill Colby
said "What do you mean? I went to the funeral. I went to the
wake." You know, it's just outrageous. It's just, you know --
for someone like Dan Rather to....
KING: Did Rather say it as a fact, or he said it....
SMITH: As a fact, on the news.
KING: Well, he said there were stories to the effect,
right?
SMITH: No, he said it as a fact.
CASEY: He said no. You know....
SMITH: You know Bill Casey isn't dead.
CASEY: I couldn't believe my ears.
SMITH: He must have been kidding.
SMITH: No. And Mom was sitting there.
CASEY: Colby was there, you know, the ex-CIA Director,
and said "That's not right, Dan, because I was to his funeral."
KING: Is it possible that you....
SMITH: I wish it were true.
[Laughter.]
KING: But you didn't react -- did you react with pain
when those stories went around?
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KING: Someone said were you that much in love that you
would both lie for his memory.
CASEY: No, that's not true.
SMITH: No.
CASEY: He would never want us. He'd never do anything
for us to lie.
SMITH : I wasn't taught how to 1 ie . And I had a very
good teacher.
CASEY: Bill Casey was not a liar.
KING: Do you miss your husband a lot?
CASEY: Oh, sure. I'm getting used to it. But I do
miss him. Of course, when he was alive and sick, we always
thought he'd get better.
KING: You miss your Dad, huh?
SMITH: He was fun. He was my best pal. He was a true
KING: He lived a hell of a life, too. One cannot say
that he did not live to the fullest.
SMITH: Yeah. He was just a dad, though. I really
didn't, you know, think of him any more than a Dad until really
the last few years.
KING: Thank you both for coming.
CASEY: Thank you, Larry. It was really a pleasure.
KING: Sophia, thank you. My pleasure.
SMITH: Thank you.
KING: Our guests are Bernadette Casey Smith, the
daughter of the late Director of the CIA, William Casey, and
Sophia Casey, his widow. And Bill Casey's posthumous book, The
Secret War Against Hitler.
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