INEPT ENVOY CLOUDED VIEW OF MOROCCO

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000100130017-2
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: December 21, 2011
• Sequence Number: 17
• Publication Date: November 19, 1984
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified and Approved For Release 2011/12/21 : CIA-RDP90-00965R000100130017-2
7 :7
WASHINGTON POST
19 November 1984
JACK ANDERSON
Inept Envoy Clouded View ofmorocco
Presidents have been rewarding political allies
with ambassadorships practically since the
birth of the republic-to the occasional
.embarrassment of the United States, but only
rarely with any'serious harm to its foreign policy.
A political appointee's ignorance of his duties is
usually outweighed by the diplomatic skill of his
underlings, and his access to the president can
compensate for a wealth of incompetence.
But something went wrong with the traditional
safeguards when Joseph Werner Reed set out on
the road to Morocco in 1981.
The result was a strategic disaster for the
Reagan administration: the astonishing union of a
supposedly staunch U.S. ally, Morocco, with the
virulently anti-American dictatorship of Libya.
It would be unfair to lay the Morocco-Libyan
rapprochement solely at Reed's door. The Central
Intelligence Agency is still trying to figure out what
happened and will have some hard questions to
answer before outraged congressional committees,
But Reed can certainly bear a large share of the
blame for the White House's failure to learn what
was in the works until it was too late for anything
but hand-wringing. Though the Libyans had been
courting King Hassan of Morocco for over a year,
Reed was so confident of his friendship with Hassan
that he discounted evidence that the king might not
be completely loyal to the United States.
It was a measure of Reed's detachment that he
was vacationing in Maine when Morocco's'
"friendship treaty" with Libya was announced. Old
hands in Foggy Bottom and on Capitol Hill weren't
surprised that Reed was, literally, so far out of it.
Reed has admitted, in conversations with irate
members of Congress, that his old buddy Hassan
informed him of the treaty with Libya only an hour
before the monarch announced it to the rest of the
world. For years the ambassador had assured
anyone within earshot that he had "unprecedented"
access to Hassan and his inner circle.
Reed's behavior was based on his confidence that
his close relationship with Hassan ensured
U.S.-Moroccan solidarity. Reed. once had the sentry
boxes outside his Rabat residence painted red.
white and blue, and named the house Villa America.
When the Moroccan prime minister had tea with
the Senate Foreign Relations Committee here,
Reed unfurled a large banner to welcome him.
In fact, Reed suffered from a severe case of
"clientitis." He sang Hassan's praises toCongress
and the White House. He helped engineer an
intelligence-sharing agreement with Morocco that
gave Hassan information that U.S. spy satellites
had picked up on the Polisario rebels in the
disputed western Sahara war. This agreement and
several others are now under review.
For all his claimed intimacy with the Moroccans,
Reed is often ridiculed by them, State Department
sources told my associate Lucette Lagnado. This
opinion was shared by Sen. Thomas F. Eagleton
(D-Mo.), who referred to Reed after a 1982 visit to
Morocco as "a 14-karat nitwit."
An ambassador is supposed to be the president's
eyes and ears, as well as the mouthpiece for
administration views. Once again, a president has
been hamstrung by having an unprofessional
ambassador in a sensitive foreign embassy.
Declassified and Approved For Release 2011/12/21 : CIA-RDP90-00965R000100130017-2