DIRECTOR CASEY OF THE U.S. CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000605410001-8
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 3
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: May 10, 2012
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: May 1, 1986
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

.STAY _~. ~~.,
Declassified in Part -Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/10 :CIA-RDP90-009658000605410001-8
.May 1986
In this rare interview with Director of the
U.S. Central Intelligence Agency William -
Casey the chief of that important arm of our -
government tells CONSERVATIVE DIGEST that he
feels like the conductor of a great orchestra
Director Casey
Of The U.S. Central
Intelligence Agency
ILLIAM JOSEPH CASEY, bom
to New York in March 1913.
was graduated from Fordham
University in 1934 and received his
law degree from St. -John's Law School
in 1937. He went to work for the
Research Institute of America, now
headed by Leo Cheme: joined the Nary
after the attack on Pearl Harbor; and
became Chief of Intelligence Opera-
tions in the European Theater of the
O.S.S. After the war, Casey practiced
as an attorney and taught tax law at
New York University for fourteen vears.
[n the Nixon and Ford Administra-
tions he served as Chairman of the
Securities and Exchange Commission;
Under Secretary of State for Economic
Affairs; President and Chairman of the
Export-Import Bank; and, on the Pres-
ident's Foreign Intelligence Advisory
Board. When he resisted unwise policy,
as he often did, he resisted as a con-
,ervative guerrilla but behind closed
doors.
During the Carter years. Bill Casey
was in business as a member of the
boards of several corporations, and in
1980 he became campaign manager
for his old friend Ronald Reagan.
In January 1981. Casey took over
the directorship of the Central Intelli-
gence Agency. He found a demoral-
ized agency which his predecessor,
Admiral Stanstield Turner, had all but
eviscerated in aReffort to appease an
implacably hostile "post-Watergate"
Congress. At the time Casey moved
into the Director's office the C.I.A.'s
resources were at an all-time low.
America's allies were reluctant to share
key information and were nervous about
cooperating because of a river of leaks
from our Freedom of Information Act
and other sources -many apparently
originating with the House and Senate
Intelligence Committees.
Under Admiral Tumer, the C.I.A.'s
operational capacity had been savaged.
That America's capacity for covert ac-
tion was an essential element in
America's defenses had been forgot-
ten, Forgotten too was its role as a
buffer to make it unnecessary when-
ever possible for the United States of
America to commit troops to defend
its interests.
There was a great outrage when
Ronald Reagan was campaigning for
his second term in 1984 and said that
the erosion of U.S. intelligence in the
Carter years may have contributed to
the success of terrorism in Beirut. But
many professionals in the intelligence
community believe that his remarks
were thoroughly justified. The self-
serving Stansfield Turner was quoted
as saying that the President must be
wrong because the C.I.A. didn't cut
a single operative overseas. A number
of anti-Communist C.I.A. veterans who
were forced out during his incumbency
still express anger and disbelief that
Turner made such a claim. One of
these veterans reported that, in West-
ern Europe alone, the C.I.A.:
? Lost much of its intelligence-report-
ing ability in West Germany;
? Lost many of the Greek-speak-
ingcomponent at the Athens station;
? Lost experienced intelligence
analysts from the Paris station;
? Lost its chief of station in Madrid;
and also
? Lost the key operative who had
helped to prevent a Communist take-
over in Portugal.
- In other areas, some of the most
experienced men in covert operations
from Africa to Central America -
men with invaluable and irreplaceable
networks of sources -were lost to
us. These men did not take early retire-
ment, they were fired. And, accord-
ing to our inside C.I.A. sources, the
books were altered to show that they
left voluntarily. Considerable aim-twist-
ing was applied to induce those who
had received pink slips to accept this
arrangement.
The loss of such veterans (about
320 in Turner's 1977 "Halloween Mas-
sacre" alone) did devastating damage
to the C.I. A.'s operational capacities.
All of this damage had to be repaired
by William Casey and Ronald Reagan.
For example, a number of the C.I.A.'s
best "assets" had simply refused to
deal with relatively inexperienced case
officers assigned to them in place of
their previous handlers. Others played
double games. In one notable case that
came to light only recently, a C.I.A.
source in a West European Socialist
Party became an effective conduit for
deception relating to Central America
and other areas -and wasn't identi-
fied as such for several years, since
he had correctly recognized the inex-
perience of his new control.
The C.I.A. and the broader U.S.
intelligence community needed a man
at the helm with the respect and trust
of the President, the confidence and
independence of mind to overcome the
lethargy cif an intelligence bureaucracy
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 Declassified in Part -Sanitized Copy Approved
and an image of integrity and per-
. sonal authority. President Reagan chose
Bill Casey, who since his appointment
has had to withstand a vicious cam-
paign of vilification that does no jus-
tice to his considerable achievements
in reviving a moribund intelligence com-
munity and supplying it with authen-
tic leadership.
Casey is a man with a profound
understanding of the shape and con-
tinuity of Soviet secret operations
against the West, a man who (unlike
some of the younger bureaucrats around
him) understands that until you have
mastered the history of the Comintern
or the "Trust," you remain a novice.
in the Great Game. Here is a man
whose uncompromising anti-Marxism
has now thoroughly offended the com-
placent One Worlders at the Council
on Foreign Relations. And with good
reason. Determined to put America's
intelligence house in order, he has to
a great extent succeeded.
Unusual among the very top
administrators, Casey has taken a per-
sonal interest in intelligence matters
in world crisis spots, particularly Cen-
. tral America and the Caribbean. As a
former "operations man" with a wealth
of personal experience in the realities
of intelligence work in the field, he
has not only worked as Director of
Central Intelligence, but as the de facto
chief of the Central American and Carib-
bean sections of the C.I.A.
_ Obviously, Mr. Casey's support for
the Freedom Fighters in Nicaragua and
Afghanistan will continue to draw in-
tense fire from those on the left in
Congress, and no doubt there wilt be
attempts to revive the anti-C.I.A.
witchhunts of the mid-1970s. How-
ever, strong .leadership from Director
Casey will resist these new efforts to
cripple the Agency's operational capa-
bilities and to deny the United States
that vital "third vption" in the contest
with the Soviet Union and its surrogates.
That option is a means of projecting
power that goes beyond traditional diplo-
macy but stops shcirt of war.
Q. Overall, Director Casey, how has
the morale of the C.I.A.'s intelli-
gence officers and empbyees changed
since you took charge?
A. I think morale has risen greatly in
the past five years. You can see this
by talking with Agency officers at home
and overseas or just by walking the
halls here in our headquarters. Two
years ago, I asked everyone to submit
ideas about a search for excellence,
and the response was the kind of ter-
rific outpouring that only takes place
in an organization with high morale.
Our retention rate is well above that
of a similarly sized organization in
the private sector, and better than the
govemment average. We've been able
to rekindle a spirit of professionalism,
and you can see that professionalism
in the high quality of the information
we collect, analyze, and deliver to
policymakers.
Q. What are .some of the major
misunderstandings that the general
public holds regarding the C.I.A.'s
fundamental mission and activities?
A. ('m afraid the public tends to be
misled about our mission by the huge
variety of "spy fiction" that is avail-
able and by some biased reporting about
the Agency. We are in the informa-
tion business. The overwhelming major-
ity of our effort is devoted to the
collection, analysis, and delivery of
intelligence information to key pol-
icymakers and to counterintelligence
abroad. Unfortunately, almost all the
public attention is focused on missions
the Agency is authorized to carry out
as a component of U.S. foreign policy.
This is a small part of our activity.
Some people still believe the' C.I.A.
engages in all sorts of illegal activ-
ities without any constraints, but the
truth is that we are one of the most
carefully scrutinized and regulated agen-
cies in the government. Everything we
do is done at the direction of the Pres-
ident and the National Security Coun-
cil; we keep the Congress well informed,
and we scrupulously observe U.S. laws
and Presidential directives that reeu-
late our activities.
Q. Are intelligence operations alien
to the American tradition?
A. Quite the contrary, John. we've
always had some kind of intelligence
activity in this country. Even before
the Revolutionary War, George
Washington was involved in collect-
ing intelligence for the British about
the French and their Indian allies. Dur-
ing the.Revolutionary period, Benjamin
Franklin arranged for the French to
provide weapons to George Washing-
ton's freedom fighters and John Jay
operated an intelligence net. After the
War of 1812, Secretary of State Daniel
Webster regularly employed spies
against the British. Both sides used
spies in the Civil War, and the Union
forces took advantage of such new
techniques as sending up observers in
aerial balloons to see what was goine
on behind Confederate lines. [could
document a great deal more about the
role of intelligence in our history -
the Agency maintains a collection in
its library of more than ?0,000 vol-
umes about the history of intelligence,
gathering.
Q. What is the state of your rela-
tions with the U.S. media and the
academic foreign-policy community?
A. Our relations with the mass media
can sometimes be contentious, because
they want to publish every imaginable
detail and we obviously cannot say
too much about what goes on inside
the Agency. We need to protect our
sources of information and intelligence
mechanisms, and so we attempt to ob-
tain the media's voluntary coopera-
tion in that regard. After all, we pro-
tect their freedom. as well as our own
and that of all Americans.
We also work against hostile intel-
ligence services overseas that are con-
stantly trying to penetrate our organiza-
tion and our government. We have
to be circumspect about our capabil-
ities in that area. Nevertheless, we try
to be as forthcoming as we can with
the mass media and the public within
the constraints under which we oper-
ate. We never lie to the press or try
to mislead the media. And we have
no desire to impinge on freedom of
the press. But, if we are going to be
able to carry out our mission, we do
have to be protective of the lives of
our sources and of our sensitive and
expensive collection systems.
You also ask about relations with
the academic community. These are
really quite good. We rely on schol-
ars around the United States to help
us interpret world events, to give us
advice on a variety of technical is-
sues; and to challenge us construc-
tively and offer a broad variety of
perspectives. Some academics have
expressed reservations about working
with the Agency -and some are clear-
ly hostile -but we are not going to
twist anyone's arm to work with us.
Our Director of Intelligence, Bob
Gates, who has been nominated by
the President to be Deputy Director
of Central Intelligence, made a speech
at Harvard in February outlining the
ways in which we deal with academ=
ics, and the response on the part of
scholars has largely been positive. We
have no desire to restrict or censor the
work academics do for us, except that
continued
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we must protect any secret informs- sight Committees have generally been A. Our recruiting program both on and
tion to which they may have had access. responsible and helpful colleagues. off college campuses has been a real
We also must bear in mind the impact There have been some exceptions, how- success story in the last few years.
some types of research may have on ever, and some material has gotten Our recruiters have faced some dis-
U.S. foreign policy if C.I.A.'s inter-
est is revealed. The best academics
seem to understand that, without C.I.A.
and others out there defending the Amer-
ican way of life, their own academic
freedom would vanish in a hurry.
Q. How can C.I.A. respond to crit-
ics when fundamehtally everything
it undertakes is secret?
A. What is secret about intelligence,
basically, are the sources and methods
we use to obtain information. This
means that much of what we do con-
tains at least some classified elements.
As a result, the Agency can seldom
answer its critics because for security
reasons it can rarely tell the whole
story. Much of the criticism is ill-
founded, and some is so "far-out" that
it doesn't, deserve a response. There
is a tradition in intelligence that we
are supposed to be a silent service,
so for the most part we have to rely
on others to lake up cudgels in our
defense.
Q. To what extent has trust and
cooperation with Allied intelligence
changed?
A. I'm not going to discuss relations
with our Allies as this is a sensitive
subject and should remain under wraps.
I can say that relations with our friends
continue to be good.
Q. How do you view the adversarial
positions taken by so many in the
House and Senate? Are criticisms
of C.I.A. related more to questions
of Administration policy, or are they
more on fundamental concepts of
intelligence such as covert action?
A. We've usually had good relations
with the Congress. We provide both
Houses with an enormous amount of
intelligence because they are highly
interested in foreign-policy matters.
Our relations with the Oversight Com-
mittees are also good, in spite of what
you may have read in some press ac-
counts. We do believe in the over-
sight process and assign some of our
best people to make it work. We recog-
nize that many things that go on up
on the Hill are due to partisan polii-
ical activity, and that some of the crit-.
icism of the Agency is really aimed
at the White House.
[believe the Members of the Over-
into the public media that should have ruption at certain schools, but this has
remained in the vaults. We don't like not deterred those who are seeking a
the political posturing and we certainly career with us. [n fact, some students
don't approve of using the press as a have told us that the demonstrators
forum to debate. intelligence issues. do not represent the mainstream of
Nonetheless, [ think I can say that our student opinion, by any means, and
relations with the Congress generally that many of these demonstrators are
remain useful and productive. not even students.
Q. In the field of combatting interns- College students today are increas-
tional terrorism, Mr. Director, what ingly patriotic and interested in careers
is your agency's role? With respect that can make a difference in the world
to states that sponsor terrorist groups, -with us and with the military ser-
what are the key problems? vices -and the response to our campus
A. The' C.LA.'s role in combatting presentations, and other recruiting
terrorism involves providing informs- drives, has really been overwhelming.
tion to our national leaders about who Young people today"bring us some
the terrorists are, .where they are, how different skills than in the past - tech-
they operate, and what they intend to nological and scientific backgrounds,
do. If we can! This is a tough nut to or computer capability. Theirenthusi-
crack, because these groups tend to asm is inspiring. We recruit people
be hard to penetrate, and they operate from all sorts of disciplines, and with _
outside the bounds of normal interns- all sorts of backgrounds. We are look-
tional affairs. As you may know, the ing primarily for those who are inter-
state Department has the lead in deal- ested in work related to the affairs of
ing with efforts to stop or interdict the United States in the foreign envi-
terrorists, and we provide our infortna- ronment. I should point out that we
lion to State and the military, both of are extremely selective in our hiring
which would be involved if the Pres- procedures, and that only about one
ident decided that some sort of counter- percent of serious applicants ever make
terrorist activity were necessary. it through the process.
Q. Say, against Libya? Q. Finally, William Casey, how do
A. You are correct in suggesting that you hope your term as Director of
Libya is heavily involved in support- the C.I.A. will be remembered?
ing and training terrorists -but it is A.-['m not sure how long people will
not alone. In fact, state-sponsored ter- remember'me personally, but there are
rorism is one of the more frightening some things that I will be able to look
developments in international relations back on with considerable pride.
in ~recent years. A number of coun- Among these is the rebuilding of our
tries have provided training sites and capabilities abroad. We have also been
operational bases for terrorists -Fran, able to establish a new sense of mis-
Cuba. Bulgaria, and Yugoslavia come sion during my tenure, and our new
to mind -and we also have learned building, due to be completed next
that the proceeds from narcotics traf- year, is a symbol of the general upgrad-
fic from South and Central America ing of our resources and the support
as well as from the Far East help to we have from both the President and
provide funding for terrorist groups. the Congress. But people are the most
Q. Has the U.S. effort to combat critical ingredient in intelligence. [n
terrorism been a factor in the way some ways, [feel like the conductor
C.I.A.. campus recruiters are re- of a highly professional and compe-
garded by college students? How do tent symphony orchestra - I can give
students now regard a career in Intel- the beat and perhaps lead the orches-
ligence, and what is the most basic tra to play a bit louder or softer, but
r'equirernent -foreign-larrgr~age skill, in the end the quality of the music
a degree in political science or his- depends on the musicians. Americans
tory ...what? can be proud of the fact that their intel-
ligence "musicians" are the best in
the world.
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