LETTER TO BARRY M. GOLDWATER FROM WILLIAM J. CASEY

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP88B00443R001404070093-7
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 21, 2016
• Document Release Date: July 10, 2008
• Sequence Number: 93
• Publication Date: July 26, 1982
• Content Type: LETTER

Approved For Release 2008/07/10 :CIA-RDP88B00443R001404070093-7
26 July 1982
Honora~.)le Barry M. Goldwater, Chairman
Select Committee on Intelligence
United States Senate
Washington, D. C. 20510
Dear Barry:
Thank you for your letter of 12 July. I appreciate the thought behind
your suggestion that I put all my funds in a blind trust, but I believe we
need to consider the precedent that would be set if I were to do this.
If distortions, false assertions and innuendoes were to intimidate me
into establishing a blind trust, the same thing could happen to many other
people, including Members of the Intelligence Committees, who have similar
access to the same information that I have. Some news stories have created
the impression that I am the only Cabinet Member who has not set up a blind
trust, and that I dumped my oil stocks after some report became available.
The facts are quite different:
- Only three Members of the Cabinet have blind trusts.
-- Classified reports on oil go to hundreds, sometimes thousands,
of individuals in government_
-- I~established the screening arrang~nent to protect myself against
inadvertent participation in any decision which might significantly
affect one of my investments.
-- A good many Cabinet, and other, officials have established similar
arrang~nents to protect themselves from inadvertently acting on matters
which might affect their investments, their former employers, their
former clients, etc.
- Of all the screening arrangements, mine is the mast oornprehensive
and the only one I know that is designed to function on a real-time basis.
- My oil stocks were not "dumped" but were sold over a period of a
year by my investment adviser who has fu11 discretion to buy and sell
and has done so without any direction from me. He liquidated oil stocks,
without any direction from or contact with me, at the same time he
disposed of the oil sucks of all his other clients.
Barry, I am enclosing a more detailed letter in the event you believe it
is imrportant to have my views circulated to the other Members of the Committee.
I agree with the concluding paragraph in your letter that we "can't take it
with us." You will agree that, if I were aancerned about taking it with me
or piling it up, there are other ways I mould spend my time to greater effect.
Approved For Release 2008/07/10 :CIA-RDP88B00443R001404070093-7