CIA DENIES PART IN BOMBING

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000100270032-0
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 6, 2012
• Sequence Number: 32
• Publication Date: June 23, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/06: CIA-RDP90-00965R000100270032-0
ARTICLE
ON PAGE
WASHINGT:`1 PAST
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CIA Denies Part in Bombing
Agency Criticizes Post Article on Beirut Attack That Killed 80
y Charles R. Babcock
and Bob Woodward
Washington Post Staff Writers
The Central Intelligence Agency
says it was not involved in a Beirut
car bombing that killed 80 people in
March, and has criticized a Wash-
ington Post article last month on
the incident.
The Post's May 12 article said
that President Reagan directed the
CIA late last year to train and sup-
port counterterrorist units, made
up of Lebanese and other foreign-
ers, for strikes against suspected
terrorists before they could attack
U.S. targets.
The story said that in March,
members of one of those units, "act-
ing without CIA authorization, went
out on a runaway mission and hired
others in Lebanon" to plant a car
bomb outside the residence of a
militant Shiite leader believed by
intelligence sources to be behind
terrorist attacks on U.S. installa-
tions.
The story said "CIA personnel
had no contact with those who ac-
tually carried out" the bombing. But
it added that "faced with an indirect
connection to the car bombing,"
C.S. officials canceled the support
operation.
The CIA, in a letter to The Post
y spokesman George V. Lauder,
ublished in the letters column to-
~ay, said the story "gave the Amer-
ican public and the rest of the world
the totally false impression that the
U.S. government was involved in
terrorist activity.
"This misleading theme has been
picked up by a number of other
journalists as fact and has even
been cited by the Shiite terrorists
as one of the motives for hijacking
TWA Flight 847."
The letter comes as administra-
tion officials are concerned that
some hostages from the hijacked
plane are reportedly in the hands of
the group headed by the target of
the March 8 bombing, Mohammed
Hussein Fadlallah, leader of the
Hezbollah (Party of God) militant
Shiite faction.
Fadlallah, who was unharmed,
has been tied in U.S. intelligence
reports to the bombings of the Ma-
rine headquarters that killed 241 in
1983 and the bombing of the U.S.
Embassy annex last fall.
The CIA letter to The Post added
that a House intelligence commit-
tee review of the incident concluded
on June 12 that there was no CIA
complicity in the bombing.
Two members of the committee
said yesterday that the report did
not directly address The Post ar-
ticle.
The report, they said, dealt with
a resolution by House members
who accused the CIA of financing
hit teams because of the bombing.
That resolution demanded CIA doc-
uments about the bombing.
Senior CIA and administration
officials, before and after The Post
article was published, confirmed the
details.
One senior CIA official said the
article was accurate, but he had a
problem with "the way it got picked
up ... as if we had our own hit
am out there."
CIA Director William J. Casey
aid in an interview in U.S. News &
orld Report last week that the
Lebanese had asked the CIA "to
help plan preemptive action. Before
the bombing we were ready to con-
sider helping them with planning of
that sort of action if they did it in a
surgical, careful, well-targeted
way-if they really knew what they
were doing."
He said that the CIA had given
the Lebanese training and technical
support to deal with terrorism. "But
they do any operations themselves,"
Casey said. ,We were not involved,
and no one we trained was involved
in the Lebanese car-bombing oper-
ation."
Asked in the U.S. News inter-
view if the March 8 bombing led to
a change of policy, as The Post and
other news organizations reported,
Casey said, "Well, we didn't like the
way that situation was handled. So
we pulled back from any involve.
ment in the planning or preparation
of operations."
CIA spokesman Lauder could not
be reached for comment yesterday.
CIA spokesman Patti Volz said the
letter was not written until Friday,
nearly six weeks after the story,
because the CIA just learned about
the House committee report. She
said she "wouldn't address" ques-
tions on whether the letter was part
of any administration effort to send
a message to the TWA hijackers.
Several other publications, in-
cluding The New York Times, The
Wall Street Journal, Newsweek and
the Los Angeles Times, and CBS
News later carried similar stories of
the birth and cancellation of the
administration's counterterrorism
program in Beirut.
In his letter, Lauder said the CIA
categorically denied any involve-
ment with the bombing both before
and after the article was published,
and The Post ignored the denials.
The Post article said administration
spokesmen had no comment before
publication.
The Post carried the public CIA
denial in the middle of an article
about congressional inquiries-into
the matter.
Lauder also quoted from the
House report that said its review
"leads to the conclusion that no U.S.
government complicity, direct or
indirect, can be established with
respect to the March 8 bombing in
Beirut."
IrAftnued
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 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/06: CIA-RDP90-00965R000100270032-0
a.
The House report is a public doc-
ument, but was not printed in the
Congressional Record or distribut-
ed to reporters, a committee staff
member said. It said the committee
review uncovered no evidence that
government agencies "encouraged
or participated in any terrorist ac-
tivity in Lebanon."
It also said the committee discov-
ered no evidence that U.S. intelli-
gence had foreknowledge of the
bombing.
The Post article was headlined:
"Antiterrorist Plan Rescinded After
Unauthorized Bombing." It did not
say the CIA knew about or encour-
aged the bombing.
In the U.S. News interview,
Casey also said he did not believe
planning an operation that was like-
ly to kill people amounted to assas-
sination, which is illegal under U.S.
law.
"If the Lebanese discharge their
duty to protect the lives and prop-
erty of their citizens as well as oth-
er nationals, and if in the course of
doing that someone gets killed, are
we assassinating that guy? No.
We're helping the Lebanese per-
form a security function.
"If someone gets killed or hurt,
well, it's a rough game. If you don't
resist and take protective action
against terrorists because you wor-
ry that there's going to be some-
body who might say, 'Ah, that's as-
sassination,' then terrorists can
own the world, because nobody's
going to do anything against them."
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/06: CIA-RDP90-00965R000100270032-0