ROGUE ELEPHANT

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP99-01448R000301310016-4
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 24, 2012
• Sequence Number: 16
• Publication Date: September 29, 1987
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

09-29-87 TUE la E. .2 et. et. 1=2 I I I=. ? ? ?
Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/08/24: CIA-RDP99-01448R000301310016-4 t- -
WASHINGTON POST SEP 2 9 1987
ffmattimmignmatanliinniNT
MARY McGRORY
No man loathed leaks Williamj. Casey, themirtedrenct
of the CIA.
He wanted to polygraph the whole
government. He hated for people to
write books about the agency. He often
didn't tell Congress what he was doing
for fear they would blab.
Now comes Bob Woodward, the
inexorable investigative ace of The
Washington Post, who with his partner
Carl Bernstein pushed Casey's friend
Richard M. Nixon out of the presidency
to tell us Casey talked to him no less
than 48 times over the last three yea
telling him things that Sam Nunn
(I>Ga.), a member of the Senate
intelligence committee, complains, "He
never told us.'
Congress, which liked to think it
oversaw Casey, cannot take it in.
"U any of us told these things," said
Louis Stokes (D?Ohio), chairman of the
House intelligence committee, "we
would be indicted."
Another committee member, who
not wish to be named, said, 'Woodward
was the enemy. Why did Casey invite
him to ride on his airplane and talk to
him without the presence of another
person, or a note-taker, and run the risk
of being seen with him at the airportr
It is indeed hard to fathom, but not
without precedent. David A. Stedman.
the former Reagan budget director,
succumbed to the same strange
compulsion to confess to an
unsympathetic outsider. He met
regularly with William Greider, then an
militant managing editor of The Post,
and confided his disdain for the
supply-side economics being offered by
the administration. Apparently both
Casey and Stockman wanted someone
sensible to judge their follies.
Woodward reports that when Casey
lay on his deathbed be slipped put CIA
guards outside Casey's hospital room
and spent enough time with Casey to
extract a confession that he knew about
the diversion of Iranian arms profits to
the Nicaraguan contras. Sophia Casey.
the director's widow, calls Woodward's
account "untrue . . . a lie.'
Meantime, the central point seems to
go unremarked. What Woodward is
providing is corroboration of U. Col.
Oliver L. North's Iraticontra hearings
testimony that Casey dreamed of the
day when he would have at his
command an "off-the-shelf.
Elephant
money, with the 63 million transaction
or personally arranged by Casey and the
Saudi ambassador, Prince Bandar bin
Sultan. Fadlallah escaped the car
bombing of March 1985, but 80
amocent bystanders died.
'It fits like a hand in a glove the
testimony of 011ie North,' said Arthur
L Liman, chief counsel of the Senate
Iran-contra committee.
A wisp of legality was thrown over the
attempt by an Nintiterrorisr finding
. signed by the president. It contained
vague language about "preemptive
re, aelf-defenae.? But as Warren B. Rudrnan
(R-N.H.), a member of the Senate
Iran-contra committee pointed out, the
finding was directed at preventing
terrorist action, which he described as
retribution. Casey's answer to the truck
bombing of the Marine barracks in
October 1983. And no finding could
supersede the absolute prohibition
? against assassination that is contained in
an executive order the president signed
did soon after he took office.
A footnote shows Casey's
buccaneering style: the sheik was bought
off for 82 million. Car bombings ceased.
In due course, discussion will turn to
the question of how much the president
knew about the Fadlallah assassination
attempt and when he knew it. The
White House isn't talking.
The question that should be
asked?and almost certainly won't
be?is, is it time to outlaw covert
actions?
In 1976. the Church committee told
us how the CIA abused its "covert
capabdity." as they call it, in wholesale
and appalling fashion. There was the
infamous drug experiment program, in
which LSD was given to unsuspecting
citizens; the huge, forbidden domestic
spying project, called Operation Chaos;
the subversion of the Allende
government in Chile; countless
assassination attempts against Fidel
Castro, and ad lib interference in the
affairs of nations all over the world.
The Church panel showed how the
CIA as an agency turned into erogue
elephant." The Iran-contra hearings
provided a sequel about illegal activities
transferred to the National Security.
Council, which ran a clandestine war.
Woodward shows how one old man with
a strong will and foreign funds could
laugh at the law and shake up the world.
v e was raised
full-service covert operation." agamat covert action at the hearings. A
The operation aimed at assassinating rattlesnake, yes, but we need it around
Sheik Mohairuned Hussein Fadlallab, a the house. Give it rules, and it will do no
Shiite terrorist. was finannwri kar C?ma t_
But not a single oic
Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/08/24: CIA:RDP99-01448R000301310016-4