LIKE 'A SHADOW CIA'

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000301890034-7
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: September 25, 2012
• Sequence Number: 34
• Publication Date: November 12, 1986
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/09/25: CIA-RDP90-00965R000301890034-7
" rrECIED
1 *
11T.SHINGTON POST
12 November 1986
1) Rowland Evans and Robert Novak
Like 'a Shadow CIA'
The penalty the new Democratic Congress will
try to exact from President Reagan for illicit U.S.
arms aid to Iran may mark the end of autonomy for
the National Security Council staff, now headed by
Vice Adm. John Poindexter. That punishment
would be grave, considering the importance of the
NSC and its high quality of service in the past.
What may make it possible is that the new Con-
gress will be controlled by Democrats who have
long itched to attack Reagan's national security
staff for its alleged excesses.
"Reagan has let the Democrats get to his right
on this one, and he's lost his own conservatives,"
a highly placed administration source told us.
"We are pinioned."
The easy way for the president to withdraw from
battle, mark the case closed and terminate the
policy of bribes-for-hostages would be quick release
of the remaining five Americans. More likely, in the
Willi011 of non-NSC officials, is that the Iranian
terrorists will up the ante and, when they get more
arms, seize more Americans and raise the ante still
higher.
Ending the NSC's autonomy as a unique arm of
the presidency would at the least compel Poindexter
and other NSC officers to testify on Capitol Hill.
That would terminate the strange twilight world of
the past 10 days. Neither State nor Defense has
known enough about the arms-for-hostages deal to
explain what is going on. But the NSC staff, which
knows all there is to know, today is protected from
testifying under the doctrine of separation of pow-
ers.
Exposing his personalized national security staff
to Capitol Hill would create major problems for
Reagan?and all future presidents. qg with tho
CIA 10 years ago it took a ma.or scandal to upset
decades of gentle conaressionaf oversight and force
the CIA to accent tough-minded Intelligence Com-
mittees in the Senate and the House.
The only occasion in recent times that a
president allowed his NSC adviser to testify on
Capitol Hill was in the juicy but highly specialized
case of Billy Carter and Libyan strongman
Moammar Gadhafi. President Carter sent Zbig-
niew Brzezinaki to explain the Billy Carter affair
in person and answer questions in public.
The lineup of Democrats on the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee, which would have a major
say in putting a leash on the NSC staff, worries
White House aides. The test they are using is the
contra-aid vote last year. With Sen. Claiborne Pell
certain to become chairman in Janney', the com-
mittee contains not a single Democrat who sup-
ported President Reagan's supreme effort to au-
thorize $100 million for aid to the contras.
It has been in the Repubfican-ccxgrolled senate
that Reagan has so often saved his bacon the past six
years on such inflammatory issues as arms for the
contras and for Jonas Savimbi's freedom-fighters in
Angola. But liberal Democrats on the Foreign Rela-
tions Committee have charged that Reagan's NSC
operatives have acted as surrogates for the CIA in
carrying out clandestine 0MatiOnLtraurther_the._
s pokies. &vine forced the Cato submit
to congressional wa they may demand equal
treatment for the NSC ;
No better case could be made in pursuit of that
highly questionable objective than the uncovering
of the NSC's arms aid for terrorist Iran. The case
these Democrats will make starts with a compel-
ling argument: since neither Defense Secretary
Caspar Weinberger nor Secretary of State George
Shultz could stop the arms-for-hostages trade,
Congress has no recourse but to move in on its own
to control the NSC staff.
That staff was erroneously downgraded by
Reagan in one of his first acts in office. Partly as a
result, it has failed to play the top-drawer coordi-
nating role designed for it by Dwight Eisenhower
35 years ago. Reagan has given it four bosses in
less than six years, a debilitating turnover rate.
Despite its shortcomings in working out con-
flicting policy aims pushed on the president by
tough-nosed Cabinet chiefs, former chief Robert
McFarlane and now Poindexter have ironically
converted the NSC staff into a powerful imple-
menter of policy. In the arms-for-Iran affair, it has
operated like a shadow CIA responsible to the
president alone. Even some Republicans, brought
up to respect law and order in government and
disliking runaway power, may join the Democrats
in the battle to end autonomy for the NSC staff.
01986, News America Syndicate
Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/09/25: CIA-RDP90-00965R000301890034-7