CONGRESSIONAL RECORD, NOMINATION OF WILLIAM WEBSTER

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90B00017R000500120020-5
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 27, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 13, 2013
• Sequence Number: 20
• Publication Date: March 6, 1987
• Content Type: MISC

Declassified and Approved For Release 2013/02/13: CIA-RDP90B00017R000500120020-5
2810 OONGRESSIONAL RECORD - SENATE March 6, 1987
NOMINATION OF WILLIAM
WEBSTER
Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, Presi-
dent Reagan has taken a giant step
toward rebuilding his shattered na-
tional security establishment and over-
coming the disastrous arms-for-hos-
tages policy toward Iran. His nomina-
tion of Judge William Webster to be
Director of Central Intelligence and
head of the CIA, is a superb choice,
and I welcome it wholeheartedly.
Judge Webster and I have worked
closely together over the last 10 years,
both in the Judiciary and the Intelli-
gence Committees. In that time we
have become good friends as well as
associates in government. I have the
greatest admiration for his towering
integrity, total honesty, and devotion
to fundamental principles of the Con-
stitution and the law.
My President, until January, I was
vice chairman of the Senate Select
Committee on Intelligence. During my
nearly 8 years on the committee, both
as a member and finally as vice chair-
man, relations between the House and
Senate oversight committees and the
CLA became strained. Everybody
knows that Some of the frictions
became well known-the mining of the
Nicaraguan harbors, the so-called
Contra assassination manual, the
CIA's role in what I have called the
subterranean network NSC staff built
up of certain U.S. -officials, private citi-
zens, foreign arms dealers and merce-
naries, and, or course, the massive dis-
aster of the arms-for-hostages deal
with Iran. There are other incidents,
not publicly known, which exacerbat-
ed strains between the CIA and the
oversight committees since 1981.
I do not wish to speak ill of William
Casey, now suffering from a serious
health problem. And like all of us, I
wish him only the best in revocery
from that. Nevertheless, It is well
known that he bad -a hostile attitude
toward aggressive, probing, or critical
congressional oversight of the intelli-
gence agencies, and the CIA above all.
He had well-publicized disputes with
both Intelligence committees' dating
from his own confirmation hearings in
1981. Relations between Bill Casey
and the committees waxed and waned.
but were never what I would call coop-
erative and constructive.
I would place the principal responsi-
bility for these problems on Mr.
Casey's determination to use the CIA
as an Instrument of the Reagan doc-
trine regardless of the costs to the
Agency. The consequence was that the
CIA, instead of just being an objective
intelligence agency, became embroiled
in fierce debates over major foreign
policy issues. The intelligence commit-
tees had to attempt to deal with covert
wars and deal with covert wars in
secret even though they are being re-
ported on the nightly news many
times in greater detail than the CIA
was telling us. The intelligence com-
mittees were not designed to do this,
and the oversight process was strained
to the breaking point.
However, there is fault on both sides
for failure to overcome the tensions.
Initially, I had hoped the nomination
of Robert Gates as Mr. Casey's succes-
sor would put the CIA and the intelli-
gence committees back on track. I be-
lieve Dr. Gates is personally commit-
ted to making the oversight process
work as it was intended to do. He
might like the committees to be less
intrusive or less critical of blunders,
and that is understandable. But, over-
all, my Impression was that he accept-
ed the fact of oversight and intended
to cooperate with it.
Unfortunately, Bob Gates, a patriot-
ic American I came to know well and
to respect as a thorough Intelligence
professional, became entangled in the
Iran/Contra scandal. The Senate In-
telligence Committee rightly and
properly asked him tough Questions
about his role. Evidently, he could not
allay the committee's concerns, espe-
cially about his ability to withstand
pressures from the administration to
withhold information from Congress.
I had planned to meet Mr. Gates pri-
vately to resolve any concerns I might
have had on this score. He was clearly
going to face a rough fight on the
Senate floor. I do not know how it
would have come out. But, it is clear
that a contentious, possibly prolonged,
debate over his nomination could have
further damaged the CIA. Unfortu-
nately, among the many consequences
of the Iran disaster is a further loss of
public and congressional trust and
confidence in the CIA Ground that
the oversight committees regained in
the years after the Church and Pike
committee revelations has now been
lost.
Bob Gate's patriotic decision to ask
the President to withdraw his nomina-
tion was in the best interests of the
Declassified and Approved For Release 2013/02/13: CIA-RDP90B00017R000500120020-5
 Declassified and Approved For Release 2013/02/13: CIA-RDP90B00017R000500120020-5
March 6, 1987 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD - SENATE
CIA and, I now believe, of the over-
sight process. I hope he will remain as
Deputy Director of the CIA. Bob still
has much valuable service to give the
Nation.
I would expect Judge Webster to
move quickly and decisively to repair
relations between the oversight com-
mittees and the CIA, especially in the
area of covert operations. His reputa-
tion for rigid adherence to law and to
basic American norms will stand him
in good stead. He should start with a
reservoir of trust and confidence,
qualities his predecessor squandered in
futile fights to limit congressional
oversight.
No doubt, the Senate Intelligence
Committee will subject Judge Webster
to rigorous questioning. There are
some issues which need to be dis-
cussed, including the FBI's handling
of the Miller espionage case in Califor-
nia, the FBI's role in the defection of
Edward Lee Howard, reported FBI
break-ins of the offices of groups op-
posed to administration policy in Cen-
tral America, and others. I would
expect Judge Webster to deal satisfac-
torily with these matters.
More importantly, I would urge the
committee and Judge Webster to use
the confirmation hearings to develop
firm understandings about how the
oversight process will operate during
his tenure as Director of the CIA.
Rules and procedures are fine. We ne-
gotiated written oversight guidelines
with Bill Casey while I was vice chair-
man. They did little good. What makes
oversight work is a shared view that
the process is constructive and an inte-
gral part of our system of checks and
balances.
Perhaps the present chairman and
vice chairman, who are doing such a
splendid job, will allow a recently-de-
parted colleague on the committee and
a Senator who deeply believes in the
oversight process to suggest some
questions to pose to Judge Webster.
Will he be able to provide satisfac-
tory assurances that he will keep the
committee fully and currently in-
formed about all intelligence matters
so that another Iran/Contra scandal
can be avoided in the future?
Can he assure the committee that he
will insist on scrupulously objective in-
telligence analyses of arms-control
issues, the Contra insurgency, other
insurgencies around the world sup-
ported under the Reagan doctrine, and
similar contentious issues, no matter
what ideologues in the administration
may want to hear? Can he really go
back to just saying just the facts, pro-
vide the facts, and let the policymak-
ers decide the policy but makes the in-
telligence agency, the CIA, a body that
provides just the facts and not the
policy.
Perhaps most important of all, can
be assure the committee that, as Di-
rector of the CIA, he will be independ-
ent and strong enough in this adminis-
tration to make the oversight process
work even In the face of opposition
from other, some quite senior, officials
who prefer to continue the old ways?
Mr. President, I am gladdened by
this nomination. While I am no longer
a member of the Intelligence Commit-
tee, I am a firm believer in the value-
indeed, the necessity for the integrity
of our democracy-of oversight of in-
telligence by strong, independent in-
telligence committees in the House
and Senate. I will watch Judge Web-
ster's confirmation hearings with
great interest. His nomination is a
badly needed opportunity for a fresh
start, and I earnestly hope that both
he and the intelligence committees
will make the most of it.
Mr. President. I yield the floor.
Mr. HUMPHREY. Mr. President,
before the Senator yields the floor, I
wonder if he would be willing to re-
spond to a few questions from the Sen-
ator from New Hampshire?
Mr. LEAHY. I believe my time has
expired. I am just not sure what the
parliamentary situation is.
The PRESIDENT pro tempore. The
time has expired.
Does the Senator wish to ask for ad-
ditional minutes?
Mr. HUMPHREY. Mr. President, I
ask unanimous consent that we might
have 5 minutes so I can ask a few ques-
tions of the Senator from Vermont.
The PRESIDENT pro tempore.
Without objection, It is so ordered.
Mr. HUMPHREY. Mr. President,
does the Senator from Vermont con-
trol the time?
Mr. LEAHY. I will be glad to yield
for a couple of minutes for some ques-
tions. I have been here since about
10:30 waiting to get back to an 11
o'clock meeting in my office. But go
ahead.
Mr. HUMPHREY. I understand.
Mr. President, I did not hear all of
the Senator's remarks, but what. I did
hear were sensible and prudent obser-
vations, and recommendations.
Mr. LEAHY. I may be willing to
yield even more time. [Laughter.)
Mr. HUMPHREY. That does not
surpirise this Senator for the Senator
from Vermont gained a highly respect-
ed reputation during his years of serv-
ice on the Intelligence Committee and
lately before this Congress as the
ranking member of that body.
I wanted to ask the Senator's opin-
ion, if I might have his attention, if
the proposed arms-for-hostage swap to
Iran of 1980 which was not consum-
mated, to be sure, but which was of-
fered involving some $150 million of
military supplies which had been paid
for earlier by the Shah and which
were proposed to be delivered in
return for hostages-52 hostages then
held by Iran-if that deal, even
though not consummated but offered,
was any less reprehensible and unwise
than the arms-for-hostage swap in
1986?
I do not ask that in a partisan sense
or to gain any advantage, but I ask it
in sincerity.
Mr. LEAHY. I take ft as
question.
As far as any attempt to fr,
hostages held in the American Et,
sy, the most of what I know ab
that, whether the involvement
Desert One or anything else, come ii:
closed-door, classified sessions. I would
be glad to respond in greater detail at
another time to the Senator from New
Hampshire. I am sitting here trying to
understand what it was I read in the
press and what I heard in classified
meetings. Rather than take a chance
of referring directly to a classified
meeting, I will not.
I will say this, though, and I say it
consistently: I think it is wrong, and I
say this whether it is a Democratic or
a Republican administration, it is
wrong to pay ransom for hostages, cer-
tainly to a terrorist nation like Iran,
one of the three most significant ter-
rorist nations, in my estimation, to pay
ransom for those hostages to Iran
being wrong whether done by Republi-
can or Democratic administrations,
and certainly in the kind of ransom.
On American arms, whether the
claim was made that the Shah paid for
them or they had paid for them or
anthing else, is wrong, because I see it
as putting in jeopardy all Americans
who travel or work or who have reason
to be in that part of the world. What
happens when more arms are needed
is they look around and find out who
is traveling there. If the precedent is
established, we will pay the ransom.
Whether It is something that was
done by the Carter administration, the
Reagan administration, or anything
else, I will tell the Senator from New
Hampshire that my condemnation is
just as strong. I think it is wrong.
Everything I learned during 8 years
on the Intelligence Committee tells
me It is wrong, that it is the wrong
way to go.
Mr. HUMPHREY. I am not sur-
prised at the Senator's answer. I asked
the question to make the point that
the arms-for-hostages swap in 1986 rel-
ative to Iran was not the only thing.
Indeed, in terms of dollar swap, the
same thing was attempted in 1980.
This is the second. It does not make It
any less reprehensible, that it was
smaller or involved fewer persons or
fewer dollars. I wanted to make the
point that this was not the first one.
I want to make the point further
that the persons connected with the
1986 arms for hostages swap should be
held accountable; likewise, those who
are still in Government service and
who were connected with the 1980 at-
tempted arms-for-hostage swap in Iran
likewise should today be held account-
able and should not be occupying por-
tions of high responsibility.
I thank the Chair and I thank the
Senator.
Mr. LEAHY. I thank the Chair and I
yield back whatever time I have re-
maining.
Declassified and Approved For Release 2013/02/13: CIA-RDP90B00017R000500120020-5