'CHAOTIC PERSONAL LIFE' CASTS PALL ON DURENBERGER INTELLIGENCE ROLE

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Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): 
CIA-RDP90-00965R000302320054-6
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RIPPUB
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K
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3
Document Creation Date: 
December 22, 2016
Document Release Date: 
October 4, 2012
Sequence Number: 
54
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Publication Date: 
March 13, 1986
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OPEN SOURCE
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Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/10/04: CIA-RDP90-00965R000302320054-6 /AR, iCLZ %:,7L .. J O 4 PAU -~ WA3'IINGTON TIM 13 March 1986 `Chaotic personal life' casts pall on Durenberger intelligence role Second of two parts. By Bill Gertz THE WASHINGTON TIMES There is growing concern in the intelligence agencies that Sen. Da- vid Durenberger's tortuous and tan- gled private life has seriously dam- aged his ability to effectively lead the Senate Select Committee on In- telligence, which is charged with overseeing the way the American in- telligence system operates. Since taking control of the panel 14 months ago, Mr. Durenberger, 51, Minnesota Republican, has achieved national attention not only as a high- profile, activist committee chairman, but for his chaotic per- sonal life as well. Revelations about Mr. Durenber- ger's marital problems and subse- quent affair with a former employee have strengthened the arguments of critics who complain that Mr. Durenberger is not the best man to head the sensitive panel. Professionally, Mr. Durenberger's critics say the senator has moved away from the laissez-faire ap- proach adopted by his predecessor, Sen. Barry Goldwater, and has tried to use the intelligence post to influ- ence the course of U.S. foreign policy. As a result, some observers say the panel's new aggressive style is reminiscent of the late 1970s when Sen. Frank Church headed the com- mittee and regularly pilloried the in- telligence community in public hearings. "He still has the attitude that what we want to do is restrain things and have a Church-style approach '[to- oversight]," said one committee staff member who declined to be named. During his tenure Mr. Durenber- ger has opposed the Reagan admin- istration's use of covert action pro- grams, openly feuded with CIA Director William Casey, made sev- eral controversial staff changes, faced criticism that serious leaks about U.S. covert action programs came from Congress, and started a committee public relations program that some experts believe is hazard- ous for intelligence work. Mr. Duren- berger declined to be interviewed for this article. The 15-member committee, first constituted in 1976, was set up to be the exclusive Senate body mon- itoring the CIA. Always a hotbed of controversy, the committee has wavered over the years from operating in relative ob- scurity to being the focus of national attention. Its first chairman, Sen. Daniel Inouye, Hawaii Democrat, is little remembered, in contrast to the flamboyant style of former chairman Church. Now, the committee's public pro- file is on an upswing. Mr. Durenber- ger's direct criticism about how the administration handles intelligence issues is raising the hackles of pro- fessionals in the community and fel- low senators who believe the best thing to say publicly about sensitive intelligence matters is nothing at all. Mr. Goldwater, who left the com- mittee in January 1985 to take over the Senate Armed Services Commit- tee, has opposed the existence of the oversight committee since its estab- lishment. .When I was chairman, I couldn't prevent the members from using" the classified information they came across, Mr. Goldwater said, criticizing the use of the committee as a vehicle to influence the admin- istration's foreign policy. "But I tried to point out to them that it was an abuse of senatorial privilege" Sen. Malcolm Wallop, Wyoming Republican, who lost a political ma- neuver in January 1985 to become chairman of the panel, remains critical of the committee's work. "There is a great need for exper- tise and continuity" on the commit- tee, said Mr. Wallop, who spent eight years on the committee - the maxi- mum allowed under law. "There are too many people, too many leaks, too much involvement, too much turn- over on the staff, and no real ap- praisal of what it is that we seek to achieve in oversight:' For the last year, Mr. Durenberger has lived at the Cedars, an evangeli- cal Christian fellowship house in Arlington after splitting up with his wife of 14 years. He is also undergo- ing psychological counseling in Bos- ton. Several experts interviewed about the general problem - with- out specific reference to Mr. Duren- berger - gave mixed answers about the potential security problems posed by the mental health traumas he faces. Federal guidelines, which apply only to executive branch employees, but not to members of Congress or their staffs, normally would disqual- ify an individual from working in a security-sensitive area if they are believed to be mentally unstable, ac- cording to George Woloshyn, an as- sociate director of the office of Per- sonnel Management who is responsible for overseeing federal background investigations. "Basically a person who is psy- chologically unbalanced ... is not fully in control of his faculties," Mr. Woloshyn said. "Where there is sus- picion that an individual may not have a sufficient sense of personal responsibility to safeguard informa- tion ... there's no doubt in my mind that that person ought not gain access to sensitive information:' A senior administration intelli- gence expert said CIA guidelines outlining conditions under which a Sensitive Compartmented Informa- tion clearance - the highest level security clearance - can be with- drawn include such personal prob- lems as separation or divorce, extra- marital affairs, psychiatic care or unorthodox social behavior, accord- ing to an adminstration security ex- pert. While Mr. Durenberger, as a member of Congress, is not required to have a security clearance he is granted access - as a committee member - to Sensitive Compart- mented Information. "Durenberger's case easily meets the standards for which a security clearance would be revoked, at least until his problems are resolved:' said the official who declined to be identified. Psychiatrist Fredric Solomon - who has studied ways to prevent dis- turbed persons from attacking pub- lic officials for the U.S. Secret Serv- ice - said the fact that a person is seeking either psychological or psy- chiatric counseling does not consti- tute a danger to secret intelligence work. Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/10/04: CIA-RDP90-00965R000302320054-6 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/10/04: CIA-RDP9O-00965ROO0302320054-6 "It's not a flag of great risk;' said Mr. Solomon, who declined direct comment on Mr. Durenberger's case. "I worry about people who are troubled and never ask for help." OPM's Mr. Woloshyn, however, said if someone with mental instabil- ity is found working in a sensitive executive branch job, "that person essentially should be transferred to another job which is less sensitive - where the potential for damage is not as great." Mr. Durenberger's closest confi- dant on the panel, committee staff director Bernard McMahon, said he's unsure if Mr. Durenberger's personal problems have intruded on the committee work. "I don't know whether it's affected him or not," Mr. McMahon said. "I'm just saying that as far as the way this committee functions, I don't see any difference:' But some congressional and ad- ministration officials disagree, with several expressing frustration that Mr. Durenberger and Mr. McMahon are meddling in foreign policy is- sues, including attempts to block military support for resistance forces in Marxist dictatorships. Sources say that at least four intel- ligence committee senators, as well as key players in the intelligence community, believe Mr. Durenber- ger's personal problems have shifted too much political power within the Senate intelligence committee to Mr. McMahon. A White House official familiar with Mr. Durenberger's problems said Mr. McMahon wields "a fair amount of clout" over intelligence policy while another intelligence of- ficial put it more bluntly: "The ex- ecutive branch believes Bernie sets the committee's agenda." The intelligence official said the chairman and staff director trav- elled to Europe last year to meet overseas intelligence officials and several came away with the impres- sion that Mr. McMahon guided the agenda while "Dave seemed mildly interested" One senior administration policy- maker charged Mr. Durenberger and Mr. McMahon - once executive assistant to former CIA Director Adm. Stansfield Ilirner - share a bias against paramilitary covert op- erations. And as a result of Mr. Durenberger's reliance on Mr. McMahon, he said, the committee has been influenced against covert operations in the Third World. Covert action can involve a range of intelligence techniques from planting news articles in foreign publications, to financial support for political parties, to large-scale par- amilitary operations involving the transfer of weapons or training - all without showing U.S. government in- volvement. "There is no bias against covert action in this committee or on the staff," Mr. McMahon said. "We re- view many, many covert actions other than the ones that are dis- cussed in the newspapers. Every co- vert action is different and ... is judged on its own merits in terms of its cost benefit and in terms of its risk." Mr. Wallop, still a careful ob- server of the committee's actions, said the panel has moved away from "a certain pretense of oversight [and] is now involved in manage- ment. Now you have a chairman an- nouncing legislative plans when the administration says something about covert action." Mr. Goldwater, a former commit- tee chairman, praised the use of co- vert activity while decrying recent public debate over its use. "Covert action is the secret of in- telligence success, but the more you publicize the action of intelligence, the less attractive you make it," Mr. Goldwater. "I even went so far as to approve expenditures of funds to train people in covert action." Last October, Mr. Durenberger showed how he wanted to be an ac- tivist - and showed his colleagues how he differed from their view - by publicly stating: "In the case of covert action ... if it involves signifi- cant or controversial military action overseas, it will with certainty be- come a matter of public debate" The Minnesota Republican re- newed the public attack in February by charging that the Reagan admin- istration's covert support for Nic- aragua's anti-communist resistance was wrong and that he would pro- pose legislation to block the $70 mil- lion "covert" portion of the aid pack- age. He said the $70 million aid package "is a threat" to the security of the United States should U.S. forces become "bogged down in Nicaragua." However, in an apparent contra- diction to his professed opposition to covert action, Mr. Durenberger last October threatened then-Philippines president Ferdinand Marcos with a U.S.-sponsored program of subver- sion. "If Marcos refuses to deal with the reality of the problem in the Phil- ippines it may well be in the national security interest of this country to take intelligence another step be- yond its information-gathering cap- abilities," Mr. Durenberger told Na- tional Public Radio. Mr. Durenberger was apparently suggesting a covert action plan, but when asked to clarify his remarks, said, "I don't intend to make it clear to you because it wouldn't be within the rubric of intelligence nor in the authority of the chairman of the in- telligence committee to discuss that sort of thing." In still another instance, one ad- ministration official said Mr. Duren- berger acted on political instincts in reversing his opposition to covert aid to Angolan anti-communist resis- tance fighter Jonas Savimbi. Following a CIA briefing on the covert aid program late last year, Mr. Durenberger ordered a poll of com- mittee members on whether they fa- vored overt or covert assistance to Mr. Savimbi's forces, the official said. The results were 13-2 in favor of overt aid, but the vote was recast in a letter to President Reagan indicat- ing that 13 members of the commit- tee "opposed" covert aid, the official said. The committee and the White House both refused to release the letter, although its existence has been widely reported. According to the official, the let- ter outraged several committee members who felt the survey failed to account for the fact that some fa- vored both overt humanitarian assis- tance and covert military backing. Mr. Durenberger ended his oppo- sition and began favoring aid for Mr. Savimbi's forces shortly after a meeting with Charles Black, a part- ner in the high-visibility political consulting firm of Black, Manafort, Stone and Kelly. Mr. Black, in 1982 was a political campaign adviser to Mr. Durenber- ger, and last year was paid $600,000 to represent Mr. Savimbi's UNITA group. According to the source, Mr. Black was supposed to conduct a low-key effort to "reduce the inten- sity of Mr. Durenberger's opposi- tion" by letting the senator know that his opposition to covert Angolan aid would reduce his standing among Minnesota Republican lead- ers and could complicate the sen- ator's re-election campaign in 1988. While Mr. Black said there were "no discussions" of Minnesota poli- tics with Mr. Durenberger's meet- ing, shortly afterward committee staff director McMahon passed word to the White House that the senator would not try to block the UNITA aid request, the source said. Mr. Durenberger's seemingly contradictory position on covert ac- tion appears to fit within the larger framework of his overall desire of playing a major role in foreign policy. Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/10/04: CIA-RDP9O-00965ROO0302320054-6 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/10/04: CIA-RDP90-00965R000302320054-6 "I've never heard anybody even afludi; to the fact that the intelli- gence committee ought to be playing any kind of a foreign policy role in any way," said Mr. McMahon,_with the exception of funding covert ac- tion. "The confusion has only arisen because the Congress as a whole has become more sophisticated, and in their effort to understand the facts behind foreign policy decisions, they have become more hungry for facts." Some intelligence professionals accuse Mr. Durenberger of damag- ing the trust involved in the delicate congressional oversight process by publicly criticizing the CIA for lack- ing "a sense of direction" and for failing to adequately interpret Soviet policies. The published remarks prompted a bitter response from CIA Director Casey, who sharply criticized Mr. Durenberger for conducting "off- the-cuff" oversight which he said has caused "repeated compromises of sensitive intelligence sources and methods" and "unsubstantiated ap- praisals of performance." "It is time to acknowledge that the process has gone seriously awry;" Mr. Casey wrote in a Nov 14 letter. Mr. McMahon would not com- ment about the Casey-Durenbeger exchange. Sen. Frank Murkowski, Alaska Republican, has criticzed the ex- change. "I am a little perturbed at the row we see," Mr. Murkowski said. "I don't see the necessity of this committee involving itself so much in the public relations process we seem to have." Some of Mr. Durenberger's critics have accused him of restructuring the 46-member intelligence commit- tee staff to give it a more liberal ideo- logical spin. Several former committee staff professionals said Mr. Durenberger and Mr. McMahon placed a former Berkeley, Calif., "radical" in charge of the committee's covert action sec- tion. These staffers said other liberals, most of them opposed to covert ac- tion programs, have been placed in key posts on the committee. These aides refused to comment. Angelo Codevilla, a former pro- fessional staff member who worked for Mr. Wallop, said he was forced to resign when Mr. Durenberger be- came chairman. Mr. Codevilla said the senator drove out aides who dis- agreed with his views. "This is fair enough, but his pre- tense of carrying out the purge in the name of professionalism is dis- honorable;' Mr. Codevilla said. One former committee staff member charged Mr. McMahon forced the resignation last year of Thomas Blau, a long-time commit- tee aide, after a dispute. Mr. McMahon, who took over the committee staff in February 1985, said that he has worked with Mr. Durenberger to reshape the staff into a "more professional" team. Senate records show that since Mr. Durenberger became chairman, eight professional staff members left the committee and seven new professionals were hired, but Mr. McMahon attributed the turnover to new senators joining the committee. Normally, 15 of the committee's staff are designees - individuals who work directly for a single senator. The rest are considered professional staff assigned to the committee. "Some of the staff members left because some of the senators who supported them left;' Mr. McMahon said. "Nobody re-appointed them as designees and we didn't rehire them as professional staff, so they had no other choice but to leave. But that's the way the process works." Now committee staffers are split into four areas: intelligence oper- ations, budget, legal oversight - in- I cluding covert action - and "intelli- gence process;' which includes Mr. Durenberger's interest in develop- ing a sb-called "national intelligence strategy." Mr. McMahon said the new organizational structure involves "specific assignments." However two Republican senators on the committee say the staff structure limits their ability to understand intelligence issues, partly because only senior commit- tee staff members have access to rel- evant information. Sen. Chic Hecht, Nevada Republi- can, said most of what he learns about intelligence issues is obtained from meetings with intelligence community people outside of the Senate. "Often times I feel I don't get enough advice," said Mr. Hecht, who spent 18 months in East Germany as an Army intelligeece officer during the 1950s. "I meet nights, I have breakfast with people on weekends." Mr. Murkowski added: "If you don't know what's happening, you're not going to know what to ask be- cause it's not necessarily their ob- ligation to keep you informed" A third committee member, Sen. Orrin Hatch, Utah Republican, is also apparently frustrated by the in- telligence committee staff, accord- ing to a source close to the senator. Last year, when the administra- tion approached him in an effort to restore budget cuts that eliminated some U-2 reconnaissance flights, the source said Mr. Hatch "could not obtain the information from either McMahon or Durenberger that would allow him to be effective:' Mr. Hatch declined to be interviewed. Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/10/04: CIA-RDP90-00965R000302320054-6