CAUTIOUS GATES CALLED CONTRAST TO CASEY STYLE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP99-01448R000301260069-2
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 15, 2012
• Sequence Number: 69
• Publication Date: February 3, 1987
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/08/15: CIA-RDP99-01448R000301260069-2
LOS ANGELES TI:?iES
3 February 1987
CIA under Casey became mar
deeply involved in the Iran an
contra scandals than has bee
admitted. Although Gates served a
deputy director for intelligent
during the period, he so far has no
been tainted by the affairs.
'Careful Analyst'
"He's a very competent,
straightforward person. a person of
integrity. He's a careful analyst.
He's fair-minded." said Michael
Oksenberg, a University of-
Michi-gan Professor an ormer co-wor -
er at t e National Security Council.
He represents to me the best of
the profession. and it's a demanding
profession."
"I think he's clean." one former
top CIA official said Monday. "I
think he'll be questioned closely"
during confirmation hearings by
wary senators, "but many of them
will be relieved to have somebody
who's clearly not political."
For someone reportedly so apo-
litical, Gates' ascent through the
espionage bureaucracy has been
unusually rapid.
Casey already had been retired
from the CIA's predecessor, the
wartime Office of Strategic Servic -
es, for 20 years when Gates joined
the CIA in 1966 as an intelligence
analyst. In 1974, the year he ac-
quired his doctorate from George-
town University in Washington.
Gates moved from the CIA to the
National Security Council, where
he remained through the Gerald R.
Ford and Jimmy Carter adminis-
trations.
By the time he left the NSC in
1979. he was executive assistant to
then-National Security Adviser
Zbigniew Brzezinski, controlling
the paper flow within the White
House naticnal security bureaucra-
cy and acting as an informal advis-
er on Soviet affairs.
Back in the CIA under Reagan.
he served first as the agency s top
Soviet analyst and then. in 1982. as
deputy director for ;.:te!ligence. a
year later he added the post of
director of the National intelli-
gence Council, the body that over-
sees the assembly of intelligence
"estimates" of woridwide politicai
and military situations.
It is in the world of number-
crunching and thoughtful forecast-
ing-and not dark-alley spying
missions-that Gates has excelled.
"Gates has demonstrated repeat-
edly a very tough mind and he sees
the role of intelligence agencies as
making judgments, not just writing
20- Year Career Man
Cautious Gates
Called Contrast
to Casey Style
By MICHAE WI ' S,
Imes Ste Writer
WASHINGTON-To succeed his
close friend William J. Casey in the
nation's top intelligence post. Pres-
ident Reagan on Monday nominat-
ed a man who is Casey's top deputy
and in many ways his opposite.
The contrast.between-Casey and
Robert`tif._Gates-likely-will please
many critics o t e CIA and the rest
of the intelligence bureaucracy,
now under fire for missteps in both
the Iran arms affair and the quasi-
private support network for rebels
in Nicaragua.
But whether the cautious,
even-tempered Gates will have the
same sway over the intelligence
community as the irascible, adven-
turous Casey is an open question.
Gates is a 20-year veteran of the
CIA and the National Security
Council and the holder of a doctor-
ate in Soviet history. He is a
cautious sort who reportedly
frowns on "black" operations such
as the Iran arms affair, favoring the
sort of dispassionate analysis on
which he has built his own career.
Friends and observers say that he
has a quick wit and acceptable
political skills.
At 43. Gates is the youngest man
ever proposed to become director
of central intelligence, a job that
includes not only management of
the CIA but also coordination of the
entire U.S. intelligence community,
from the Pentagon to the National
Security Agency.
He appears little like the 73-
year-old Casey, the oldest director
of central intelligence in the post's
30-Year history. Casey is a former
World War 11 intelligence officer, a
Reagan political guru, an anti-So-
viet hardliner and cantankerous
defender of the kinds of 'risky
intelligence missions-such as the
Iran arms sales-that had fallen
into disfavor in the 19709.
A Senate Intelligence Committee
report last week suggested that the
United Press (nternaucnal
Robert M. Gates
history," said Bobby Ray Inman. a
former deputy gents under Casey. "When you do
that, You're never 100% right. But
your value is greater."
The covert operations that Casey
so admired "will be a new business
to him," Inman said of Gates.
Other associates say that Gates
brings the professionalism and
breadth of view to the jots thi3C
Casey, the World War II "cowboy,"
visibly lacked. But the dispassiont
ate Gates lacks the White House'
clout and, -perhaps, the internak
loyalty that made Casey a powerfal-
and often popular CIA director.
"He's quick to form judgments
and not easy to turn around. Some.
times he forms judgments by the
quickness of arrogance rather than
analysis," one critical observer
said. "He is a crackerjack analyst
who's rough on people. His man-
agement style is to deal with
substance and he doesn't give
enough time to trying to wm: the
allegiance of those who have tv
carry out his instructions."
Several former associates said
that Gates may be hindered in, the,
job by his relative youth. He i~ fully
three decades younger than Rea-
gan, and years the junior of other
intelligence heavyweights such as
National Security Adviser Frank C.
Carlucci. The odds that he will be
replaced by the next President,. in
about two years, also limit his
power to change the intelligence
community's course, they said..
CD,V r~-,-)F..
STAT
STAT
STAT
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/08/15: CIA-RDP99-01448R000301260069-2
 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/08/15: CIA-RDP99-01448R000301260069-2
But he has other assets to draw
on. inciud:^g close ties to Carlucci
ar.d .:~ ` ,uor:a! Securit?: Ac.,.cy
D.rec,or `A";tl am Odom. H;s :.ears
at .he Nat.ona! ec' r;t C;unc:;
also nay help ;make op for n;s :,ic:<
of a close reo i::c?cship vah Reagan.
ire has
than mos .:e:rg
:n and out
staff for x e:+rs, a farm e:? CL
_:irectcr 7.1
uroierstana .~ h It neo?ed t
do'cetter than most.
Staff writers Robert C. Toth and
Karen Tumulty contributed to then
story.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/08/15: CIA-RDP99-01448R000301260069-2