THE MONEY THROWER

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000505390036-2
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 13, 2011
• Sequence Number: 36
• Publication Date: September 29, 1984
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/01/13: CIA-RDP90-00552R000505390036-2
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~?; WASHINGTON POST
29 September 1984 ,"
Richard Cohen L
The Money Thrower
There he goes again.
After three terrorist bombings of
American installations in Lebanon,
after repeated charges of ineptness
and negligence and after being urged
by even many of his own supporters to
discipline or fire somebody, President
Reagan has finally done something.
He's blamed Jimmy Carter.
There are a lot things that could be
said about Reagan's charge that intelli-
gence lapses that allegedly contributed
to the recent bombing in Beirut were
the fault of previous administrations,
presumably Carter's. Mondale said it
was passing the buck. Intelligence spe-
cialists said it was lust not true, a fer
himself said it was an insult, demanded
an apology and got an "explanation."
The fact is that Reagan's remark
Was all of those things-and some-
thing else as well. It exhibited the cen-
tral Reagan paradox, which is that
when it comes to both national defense
and national security, money solves all
problems. When it comes to almost
anything else, though, particularly
welfare programs, money is a diver-
sion, a sop, a way of not thinking. You
throw money at social problems; you
fund the Defense Department.
When it comes to the Beirut bomb-
ing, for instance, the essence of the
Reagan remark is that given enough
money to hire enough spies two Amer-
icans would not now be dead. But the
assumption that a small, shadowy group
of religious fanatics could be infiltrated
is dubious at best. And anyway, lack of
spies does not explain why a security
gate was left lying on the ground and
not installed. You don't have to be
licensed to kill to put up a gate.
Ironically, Reagan would be the first
to point out the limitations of money
when it comes to other programs. He's
often accused the Democrats of throw-
ing money at social problems- and
sometimes with justification. More-
over, he fastened on the occasional
glitch to make it seem typical.
Take welfare, for example. Reagan
has consistently denounced fraud and
mismanagement in all sorts of welfare
programs, never for a moment conced.
ing that both are inevitable when bil-
lions of dollars are being spent on mil-
lions of people. To him, the exception is
the rule.
When it comes to national security,
though, the exception remains the ex-
ception. Both he and Defense Secre-
tary Caspar Weinberger cringe at re-
ports that the Pentagon has paid $92
for screws, $435 for hammers and
$7,600 for coffee makers. These ex-
amples, they both maintain, are the
exception, and they are willing to for-
give the Pentagon what they would
never be willing to forgive the Depart-
ment of Health and Human Services.
It's obvious, of course, that the issue
is not money, it's ideology. To the
president, national security is some-
thing that can be bought, and it's worth
anything it costs. On the other hand,
welfare programs are not worth any-
thing at all. He is enamored of power,
revolted by dependency and money is
just one way of expressing those senti-
ments. No amount of money, though,
can bring order out of the chaos that's
Lebanon or stability to a notoriously
unstable part of the world.
But money, at least the spending of
it, can have a placebo effect. Spending
money can be a way of not thinking. In
the case of the Beirut bombi7gs_for in-
stance, the president ignores the fact
that two of them were predicted by in-
telligence agencies and indeed the last
was publicly threated by the organiza-
tion that claims to have carried it out.
You - don't need a spy to read the
papers. You don't need to be a national
security expert to conclude that some-
one in Beirut simply forgot to shut the
door. And you don't have to be an Ein-
stein to figure that three exceptions in
one place looks a lot like the rule.
No matter. After each bombing the
president has exonerated the negli-
gent, gone moony in the presence of
the military and turned victims into
heroes through the magic of the tele-
prompter. Lack of money is not the
issue. The willingness to question
basic assumptions is. When it comes to
national security, the president wants
ever} buck but the one Harm Truman
made famous. It's the o;,e that stops in
the Oval Office.
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/01/13: CIA-RDP90-00552R000505390036-2