QUESTIONS RAISED BY TOM LATIMER, HPSCI STAFF

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP88B00443R001500040053-3
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: S
• Document Page Count: 6
• Document Creation Date: December 20, 2016
• Document Release Date: April 4, 2008
• Sequence Number: 53
• Publication Date: January 19, 1984
• Content Type: MEMO

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STAT
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MEMORANDUM FOR:
FROM:
SUBJECT:
19 January 1984
National Intelligence Officer for Counterterrorism
Director of Central Intelligence
.Questions raised by Tom Latimer, HPSCI Staff
You better get me responses to the questions raised by
Latimer on the attack on the Marine Headquarters in. Beirut as
reported on the second page of this memo
William J. Casey
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DCI/ICS-84-3055
14 January 1984
MEMORANDUM FOR: Director of Central Intelligence
VIA:
Deputy Director of Central Intelligence
Director, Intelligence Community Staff
h _04 9- N of 011 W-6-140-m-
1. This week- I met with Rob Simmons and Tom Latimer to invite them
to a briefing that we would give at the IC Staff Headquarters Building
in early February. We will highlight the key points of our FY 85 budget
submission and talk to them about overall strategy with the upcoming
hearings and elicit any questions or comments that the individual staff
members might have.
2. Rob Simmons was most enthusiastic about the idea. He stated
that he would ask all members of the SSCI Staff to attend and that he
.would make arrangements for such an overview briefing about one week
after they had received the Congressional Budget Justification Books.
He also indicated that the Chairman would be taking a very firm stand
with the Armed Services Committee this year regarding the Authorization
Bill; i.e., once they.have decided on their markup, he intends to hold
the line and not get into the kind of debate that we had last year. He
stated that this was going to be a tougher year than the last couple
because of congressional pressure to cut the defense budget, and there-
fore, the intelligence budget would be coming under a similar amount
-of scrutiny. He welcomed the idea of a budget strategy session with
us prior to the beginning of the hearings. -
3. The session with Tom Latimer was lengthier and dicier. After
explaining that we would like to have the HPSCI Staff over for a budget
overview, Latimer said fine, but that it would be difficult to get them
all at once since many of them are on travel and that they hoped to
begin the FOIA hearings in early February. I told him that we understood
and would be glad to accommodate them in whatever manner; i.e., one, two,
or three at a time, if this would be helpful to them. Latimer indicated
that it would be most important to get Mike O'Neil on board and briefed
since he is the staffer that the Chairman pays closest attention to.
Latimer and I then discussed the following points.
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This is going to. be a hard year in Congress because of
the congressional calendar (relatively short number of
days that the Congress will be in session) and attempts
by the House to trim the defense budget significantly;
as with comments from Simmons, Latimer says that
intelligence will be in for a tougher time' accordingly.
Since we have had several big increases over the past
few years, it will be much harder to justify a large
increase this year no matter what we may say.
Both Grenada and Lebanon are considered by many members
as intelligence failures.' What Latimer pointed out as
examples follows:
- The failure of the 82nd Airborne to receive the
intelligence that they needed; I countered that the
intelligence was avai-lable to the 82nd and others,
but the matter of dissemination of that information
from the 18th Corps to 82nd and their units in the
field was not the DCI's responsibility.
- The information was available in Lebanon to give the
Marines a complete heads-up, and it was not passed to
Garrity; I countered that intelligence had been
flowing into the Lebanon/Beirut area for weeks
indicated the high possibilities of terrorist attacks,
that the Marines had virtually every car bomb in the
city targeted and that they had not expected a truck
bomb--(we had no evidence of a truck bomb), and that
you cannot blame intelligence on any lack of security
to be taken around the Headquarters Compound in Beirut.
- Latimer then remarked about the FBI report on the
bombing of the embassy building in Beirut and that
this'information was not made available to the military
and appeared to be a bureaucratic shuffle between
CIA and FBI; I was unable to comment since I was not
familiar with those details.
Latimer then spoke of.the Long Report about lack of
HUMINT in the area and that he had had the staff go
back and dig up the record of the past several years
to point out that HUMINT had in fact increased
considerably within the NFIP during the past several
years; I pointed out that even though the Congress has
given us great support for rebuilding our HUMINT that
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it was one of our highest/Presidential priorities, and
that as he well knows you cannot replace HUMINT over
night. (Latimer then referred to his time when he
was Exec to Jim Schlesinger, and it was necessary to
"weed out the fat," but that there was still plenty
of meat left on the bones.) I let the subject drop
at that point.
As a result of some of the kinds of remarks from Latimer
above, he then stated that members would be asking hard
questions along the lines of "what have you been doing
with all those dollars we have been giving you for the
last several years."
Latimer then spoke of the need to get on with compliance
problems. (I had the feeling that Eimer had perhaps been
up talking to the Committee.) I pointed out to him that
this was one of the DCI's high priorities, but that we
were not going to sign up for any big bucks programs for
verification or any other intelligence collections until
it was well defined and appeared to be a viable program,
that in this particular area we had a number of highly
classified,, compartmented efforts that were looking at
the overall verification issue, but agreed that we still
had a lot of work to do in this area.
4. As you can see, terrorism, Central America, and compliance
-verification are going to be big issues this year along with "our failures,"
and what we have been doing with all the money that the Congress has given
us.
5. It is going to be an interesting year.
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