ROGUE ELEPHANT IN THE SENATE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000301890043-7
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: September 25, 2012
• Sequence Number: 43
• Publication Date: February 3, 1986
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/09/25: CIA-RDP90-00965R000301890043-7
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WASHINGTON POST
3 February 1986
Rowland Evans and Robert Novak
Rogue Elephant in the Senate
"A private poll by Sen. David Duren-
berger of his Intelligence Committee,
showing a narrow margin (reported to
us as 8 to 7) opposed to secret aid for
Jonas Savimbi's Angolan freedom
fighters, threw a roadblock in front of
President Reagan's plan to resist the
Soviet offensive in southern Africa be-
fore the plan could be launched.
-'-That does not weaken Reagan's in-
wit to shore up Savimbi's battle
against the Soviet-backed Angolan
government and to 35,000 Cuban
troops. But Senate opposition makes
the president's course more difficult
isid perhaps ultimately impossible.
This shows why the "rogue ele-
pliant" epithet used a decade ago
against the Central Intelligence
Siency may now apply to the Senate
Intelligence Committee.
Under the chairmanship of the
Minnesota Republican, the committee
has changed drastically. No longer a
eled-lip oversight panel working coop-
eratively with the CIA, it has become an
tr
open-mouthed engine of pawky. The
c.nnversion from quiet oversight has
brought the panel a role never envi-
siOned for it: dictation of national se-
curity policy for the U.S. government.
Durenberger is not alone in bring-
ing the Intelligence Committee into its
new incarnation. Sen. Patrick J.
Leahy, the Democratic vice chairman,
has been even more vocal in policy-
'waking than Durenberger. That has
caused Leahy's popularity to soar in
Vermont, where he faces a potentially
tough reelection race. It has tied Rea-
gan's hands in Washington.
But the tone of any committee is set
_I)y, its chairman, who creates its at-
mosphere and political culture. Duren-
berger publicly ruled out covert aid to
Savimbi in an interview with The
'Washington Post Jan. 27, the day the
Angolan guerrilla leader arrived in
Washington to plead his case. Any help
for Savimbi's UNITA freedom fighters
Aiould be public, Durenberger insist-
d: But Secretary of State George
Shultz, backed by Reagan, has vetoed
overt assistance on the grounds that it
could not be openly funneled through
South Africa and Zaire.
,,Atight-wing authoritarian rule in the
-Philippines is treated differently from
hiarzist-Leninist dictatorships in An-
gola and Nicaragua by the chairman of
the Intelligence Committee. On Na-
tional Public Radio last Oct. 25, he
said that if Philippine President Ferdi-
,nand Marcos neither reforms nor re-
,?41gns, "it may well be in the national
:security interests of this country to
-take intelligence another step beyond
as information-gathering capabilities."
That implies a covert operation
-*dwarfing undercover aid to Savimbi or
to, the Nicaraguan contras, which
Durenberger almost single-handedly
stymied last year.
As Committee chairman, Durenber-
mow has all but declared war on Mar-
cos. The chairman refused expend-
itures for a stop in Manila Jan. 13 by a
committee delegation headed by Sen.
Orrin Hatch unless the traveling sena-
tors agreed not to see Marcos. Angry
senators informed Durenberger that
neither he nor Bernard McMahon, ap-
pointed a year ago by the chairman as
the committee's chief of staff, could
dictate where to go and not to go.
Durenberger relented, but the [latch
delegation by then had cancelled the
Manila stop.
McMahon has managed tho coni-
inittee's transformation under Duren-
berger. A Navy protege of Adm.
Stansfield Turner, he served in die
Carter administration when then-CIA
director Turner opposed and substan-
tially dismantled the agency's ability to
perform covert operations:
Speaking not for attribution. oin?
committee member told us that rela-
tions between McMahon and William
Casey's CIA are deteriorating. He
confirmed the report to us from an-
other Senate source that McMahon
castigated Casey in the privacy of the
committee's chambers just after
Soviet KGB officer Vitaly Yurchenko
redefected to Moscow. (Durenberger
told us he had not heard of the inci-
dent. McMahon could not be reached
by us.)
Apart from such personal Unpleas-
antness, the Durenberger committee's
policymaking role and the gap be-
tween it and the CIA pose a serious
question transcending aid to Savimbi
and resistance to Soviet moves in
southern Africa: Can a president get
his own policy in place before being
rolled by the Senate's rogue elephant?
1986. News America Syndicate
Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/09/25: CIA-RDP90-00965R000301890043-7