EULOGY AT THE FUNERAL MASS FOR WILLIAM J. CASEY ST. MARY'S ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH ROSLYN HARBOR, NEW YORK

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP89G00720R000500070024-3
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 7
• Document Creation Date: December 23, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 31, 2014
• Sequence Number: 24
• Publication Date: May 9, 1987
• Content Type: REPORT

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EULOGY
AT THE FUNERAL MASS
FOR WILLIAM J. CASEY
ST. MARY'S ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH
ROSLYN HARBOR, NEW YORK
MAY 9, 1987.
By Jeane J. Kirkpatrick_
"Bill Casey is a controversial man," a liberal journalist
said to me last week. "You have to face that."
But, of course, I said, he was a bold committed man in an
age rent by controversy.
In Paradise Lost, Dante reserved the lowest rung of hell for
those who do not care --- for those who, confronted by great
questions, are uninterested; who, faced with great needs, are
unmoved; who, offered great opportunities, feel no challenge;
who, -endowed with freedom and power, make no use of it; the kind
.of man who, observing a battle between tyrants and those Who
would be free, remain .indifferent.
Bill Casey was no such man. And, he knew it.
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In one of his last public speeches, he quoted Theodore
Roosevelt:
"Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious
triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank
with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much,
because they live in the gray twilight that knows not victory nor
defeat."
"A lawyer," Casey once said, "has a ringside seat at the
human comedy." But this lawyer was not content to merely observe
his times.
"Casey is a real warrior," a CIA colleague told me ...
because, one might add, he decided to be.
had a choice.
Before he was a warrior, Bill Casey was an intellectual, a
man of letters, a bibliophile, prodigious reader, researcher,
writer, editor.
"During my entire Working he wrote, "my activities as
lawyer, author, editor have involved the gathering, analysjs,
and .evaluation of information and applying it to practical
TiOrposes."
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This penchant for gathering, analyzing, and evaluating of
information made Bill Casey a superb Director of the Central
Intelligence Agency where, insiders understand, his greatest
interest and most outstanding contribution was to strengthen the
skill and confidence of the CIA's analysts.
The same commitment to gathering, analyzing, and evaluating
information led Bill Casey to the conclusion that our violent
century is dangerous for Americans, that the stakes are very
high, and that we no longer have a comfortable margin for error.
These views were the spur to action.
Watching the Soviet Union shoot down KAL-007 on the mere
susEicion that it mi2tt have been engaged in espionage (as he put
it), observing the framing and arrest of Nicholas Daniloff
(hostage taking, he called it), Casey concluded that in the
Soviet Government, we are dealing with men who have "a
fundamentally alien and totally unpalatable value system."
He believed on the basis of vast information collected and
reflected on, that ?the Soviet leadership is "committed to
-building a military force that could fight and win a nuclear
?
war."
He was deeply concerned With growing U.S: vulnerability to
the Soviet's highly accurate mobile missiles which "promise to
make deterrence through offensive missiles increasingly uncertain
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in the years ahead." He worried about the Soviets long lead in
?research on high laser particle beam weapons, radio frequency and
kinetic energy weapons. He ardently supported SDI against a
relentless Soviet propaganda campaign.
He was also concerned, for both human and strategic reasons,
about the Soviets' "creeping imperialism" in the Third World.
They had, he Said, "unleashed the four horsemen of the
Apocalypse --- famine, pestilence, war, and death" --- in
Ethiopia, Cambodia, Afghanistan, Mozambique --- devastating
people and moving relentlessly toward "two primary targets"
the oil fields of the Middle East (the lifeline of the Western
Alliance), and the isthmus of Panama, which separates North and
South America.
No one welcomed signs of Soviet liberalization more than
Bill Casey. But 21asnost has not come to Afghanistan, Nicaragua
or to Soviet Jews.
These people will one day be free from force, Casey
believed, because "the pendulum of history is slowly but surely
swinging away from Soviet Marxism toward democracy and free
Market economics."
"The Soviet Union may have a proven recipe for subversion
and an undiluted willingness to use raw power to shore up its
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unpopular clients, but we in the West have an infinitely more
powerful weapon --- the promise of long-term prosperity."
"I am high on the free market," Casey told the Washington
Post, and many others. Freedom he believed, worked for him, for
us, and for every people who tried it. It is the alternative and
the antidote to tyranny, stagnation, and starvation.
In addition to doing what we can to support indigenous
freedom fighters, Casey wrote, we need to bring to bear, the
West's technological ingenuity, entrepreneurial talents, and free
markets on the core problems of development and "piece by piece,
technique by technique, country by country" eliminate hunger and
raise Third World living standards.
"All we have to do is muster the courage and resolve to use
our enormous advantages." He had the courage and resolve. He
could barely stand it when we missed an opportunity to protect
the United States and promote freedom. Bill Casey was a man of
passionate convictions, willing to work long hours, make hard
decisions, and endure criticism.
He dared to take a big step where one vas required
understanding, like David Lloyd George, that you .can't cross a
chasm with two Small jumps.: He did not take to unnecessary
risks, and he was not daunted by OfficUlties or difficult
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people. He worried quite a lot about America's growing
incapacity to act with discretion and dispatch.
Most of all, Bill Casey had a passionate commitment to.
preserving the independence and freedom of the United States
from terrorists, nuclear blackmail and isolation. Because he saw
them as directly relevant to American security, developing
defense against incoming nuclear missiles and supporting
Nicaraguan freedom fighters had special priority for him. There
is no question about it. But they had no more priority than law.
Bill Casey was one smart lawyer who understood politics and
history as well. He was a savvy, sometimes sassy, always feisty
guy --- and a fighter.
Some mean spirited, ill informed comments have been written
and spoken in the last days, reminding us as Marcus ?Aurelius
said, "There is no man so fortunate that there shall not be by
him when he is dying some who are pleased with what is going to
happen."
? These unpleasant comments would not have overly disturbed
our friend, "The CIA is (not) the place for tender egos and
-shriveling violets'." He told a university audience last fall,
"The debates. and clashes of ideas can get rough."
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Casey could take the guff required to support unpopular
ideas like the free market, and controversial causes --- like
the contras --- because he had studied the evidence and thought
through his positions.
He could take the guff and not give up because he had built
his life on solid foundations.
Plato and St. Augustine tell us one knows a man by what he.
loves. We know Bill Casey through his loves --- of Sophia,
Bernadette, his church, his country, his books, his freedom.
Bill Casey's inspiration was Greek in the cultivation of all
his capacities, Roman in his love of law, Christian in his love
of God and the Church, American in his love of freedom.
He lived his life to the hilt and left it in the spirit of
the man who said, "I am perfectly resigned. I am surrounded by
my family. I have served my country. I have reliance upon God,
and am not afraid of the Devil."
Bill Casey, with his intelligence, courage, wit and zest,
contributed enormously to his family, his country, his President,
and his friends.
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