GLOBAL ROLE OF JUSTICE DEPT. IS IRRITANT AT STATE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000403620012-7
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 3
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 26, 2012
• Sequence Number: 12
• Publication Date: November 12, 1986
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/01/26: CIA-RDP90-00965R000403620012-7
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WASHINGTON POST
12 November 1986
Global Role of Justice Dept. Is Irritant at State
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law enforcement, the other with viser Abraham D_Sofaer, a hard-charging for-
broad concerns about U.S. relations mer use who oversees sue areas as terrorism
worldwide. But these clashes have ante. a as ran I officials
occurred more frequently under frequentl uring tTie year_ on? nro 0 4eli
President Reagan, whose Justice s in the United states.
Department has adopted a concer- After former Navy analyst Jonathan tav Pol-
led global strategy against spies, la was arrested as an_ Israeli suy last year,
terrorists, drug traffickers and sources aid ustice officials differed sha ly
money-launderers. with Sofaer over the nature and sco e o t e m-
"We've had some real wrestling vestigatiion: Slime oT_t e etas viewed ofaer
matches, no question about it," a as aeTending Tsraeta_nd_ing to limi~Ibg~m_
senior Justice Department official ageto U.S.-Israeli relations at th exttense of a
said, referring to State and Justice. fell'....il robe- sources said.
"There's a static electricity that Justice officials ex reseed irritation at what
surrounds these things." But he said they viewe
the two "have almost always been spouses during the probe. Investigators learned
able to reach some accommoda. mdekh&11 Iy to o r v ?rw ,
.C ,lad
tion." established Swiss bank account for him and
A ? high-level State Department promised him 00,000 for US military se-
official agreed, saying the two have crets. good worked, yin relationship but alt- Although the State
a Israel for fully disclosing its involvement FBI
ing "some differences in approach." Director William H. Webster accused the Israelis
"Where you get the charge that of providing only "selective cooperation." Israeli
we're selling out to maintain good
relations is from the U.S. attorneys,
who are not familiar with interna-
By Howard Kurtz tional procedures," this official said.
w,,&Iijneto?R,,,s,rnWriter "They say, 'Gee, why can't I just
Earlier this year, the Justice De- slap a subpoena on the King of partment expanded a sensitive Spain?' When you tell them it
doesn't work that way, they say,
probe of Israeli spying in the United 'It's the State Department wimps
States, linking it to an Israeli Air
Force colonel and other key Israelis trying to ruin my case.' "
in court statements that the State Such demands for evidence
Department sought to limit. abroad "create a foreign policy conflict, and it
dipor evide
Last month, Attorney General just doesn't work," he said. "You may have to do
Edwin Meese III helped persuade a hit you o u neg want. with the other country to get
the White House to expel 55 Soviet what you want."
t diplomats , overriding State Depart One such battle occurred two years ago when
nce with Moscow and records of a Canadian bank with a branch in a
invite further retaliation against Caribbean tax haven. The Canadian prime min-
U.S. diplomats, ister complained to Reagan about the subpoena,
and State In the coming weeks, Meese nadian diplomats oeattense ~meetiinng at the Jus-
, must decide whether to bar Austr- tice Department.
ian President Kurt Waldheim from "The State Department thought we were cra-
the United States because of his zy, that we were out of our minds," a ranking
alleged Nazi activities during World Justice Department official recalled. "We were
War II, a move that State Depart- the bull in the china shop and were upsetting
ment officials fear would greatly relations with Canada. The State Department
complicate relations with Vienna. was really on Canada's side."
In one case after another, the Sources said then-Attorney General William
Justice Department has become an French Smith refused to back off, saying drug
aggressive player on the interna- traffickers frequently hide money in offshore tax
tional stage, a role that has pro- havens and that Justice would not be thwarted by
duced a growing degree of friction foreign bank-secrecy laws. The Justice Depart-
with Secretary of State George P. ment eventually won access to the bank records,
Shultz and his senior staff. leading to the conviction of a Florida business-
Such conflicts are inevitable be- man for tax evasion.
tween departments with different The focus of much recent justice Department
mandates-one tightly focused on frustration
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officials, insisting that they had not sanctioned
Pollard's activities, accused the justice Depart.
ment of waging a "malevolent" anti-Israel cam-
paign.
The interdepartmental feuding reached a cli-
max when Pollard pleaded guilty in June and
prosecutors filed a court statement that sources
said was much more detailed than the State De-
partment had wanted. The statement said the
spying operation was managed here by three
unindicted co-conspirators: an Israeli Air Force
colonel, an official at Israel's New York consulate
and a former adviser on terrorism to two Israeli
prime ministers.
Nevertheless, sources said, Sofaer succeeded
in deleting other key items from the statement,
including an assessment of damage done by the
Pollard operation.
Sofaer was unavailable for comment. A State
Department official familiar with the issue said
the department was "unhappy" about the court
statement and had argued that "there's no need
to go beyond what is necessary .... Some of the
information related to other countries and could
have upset important strategic relations, and it
was not necessary [to disclose it[ in order to
achieve the end of getting the conviction.
"One of our standard rules is we do not try to
stop a prosecution to achieve a foreign policy
end," this official said. "The dispute is over how
far you go."
The State Department is not the only agency
embroiled in disputes with key Justice officials
such as Associate Attorney General Stephen S.
Trott and internal security chief John L. Martin.
The two also argue with federal intelligence
agencies about how much can be disclosed in spy
cases without compromising national security.
Nor is the jousting between law enforcement
agencies and Foggy Bottom -a new phenomenon.
During the Carter administration, the Federal
Bureau of Investigation cited espionage concerns-
in trying to bar a U.S. visit by two Soviet officials
to discuss cultural exchanges. The two sides also
wrangled over charges that the State Depart-
ment was too permissive in granting U.S. visas
to Soviet-bloc visitors.
Although these conflicts are discussed often in
private, no current member of the administra-
tion was willing to discuss them for the record.
Kenneth W. Dam, deputy secretary of state
until he resigned to enter private business last
year, attributed the internal warfare to "standard
Washington bureaucratic politics." For example,
he said, the Justice Department tried unsuccess.
fully to wrest control of World Court litigation
from his department and criticized State's han-
dling of the court case involving U.S. interven.
tion in Nicaragua.
On U.S.-Soviet issues, Dam said, "the Justice
Department obviously believed we just wanted
to be nice to the Russians. of course, there were
people in the State Department who didn't want
to anger the Soviets, who felt it would get arms
control off the track."
Dam said disputes about offshore subpoenas,
such as the one involving the Canadian bank,
faded after senior Justice officials reclaimed that
responsibility from U.S. attorneys' offices. "The
guy who's litigating the case will do anything to
win the case," Dam said. "We weren't against
Declassified and Approved
doing anything that might anger a friendly coun-
try, but we didn't want those decisions made by a
GS-15 in Miami."
Michael Abbell, who headed the Justice De-
partment's Office of International Affairs from
1979 to 1982, said many Justice officials view
the State Department as too "wishy-washy."
"I've seen acute cases of 'clientitis' where the
State Department bent over backwards to stroke
the foreign country," Abbell said. "Every agency
has its own parochial interests. The prosecutor's
view is that my case is the most important thing
in the world ... but there are other factors in
our relations with these countries."
Few officials expressed doubt that the Justice
Department's actions can have immediate con-
sequences. When Justice officials led the admin-
istration's criticism of Italy last year for releas-
ing Mohammed Abbas, accused in the hijacking
of the cruise ship Achille Lauro, the Italian gov-
ernment collapsed within days.
Reaction was equally swift in the expulsion
case last month when Meese. argued that the
Soviets' U.N. mission had become a haven for
spies and that the State Department was "foot-
dragging" in carrying out legislation to achieve
parity between the two nation's diplomatic
staffs.
Shultz had urged Reagan to take a more mea-
sured approach, arguing that a sweeping expul-
sion would simply invite further Soviet retali-
ation. The department's fears were realized
when the Soviets dismissed the entire support
staff at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, leaving
U:S. diplomats to cook and clean.
The tit-for-tat measures began when the FBI
arrested Gennadi Zakharov, a low-level Soviet
U.N. official, and charged him with taking clas-
sified documents from a young man who had.
been working with the FBI. When the Soviets
responded by arresting U.S. News & World Re-
port correspondent Nicholas Daniloff on espio-
nage charges, senior administration officials be-
gan complaining that the Justice Department had
acted alone without considering the foreign pol-
icy implications.
In fact, Zakharov's arrest was routinely
cleared after consultation with the State Depart-
ment and the White House National Security
Council. But dustirP's hones of oursuinq the case
faded when Reagan approved a complicated
swap for Daniloff, which included Zakharov's
release after a no-contest plea.
"It came as a great shock that the Reagan ad-
ministration would go so far that we couldn't
even present our case in court before letting him
off," a Justice Department official said. "That's
fundamental. You lay out your facts in court and
make it clear the guy you're going after is guilty.
We had him cold, absolutely nailed."
Asked whether such arrests of alleged Soviet
spies are unduly provocative, this official said:
"What are we supposed to do, ignore it? Just pre-
tend it's not happening? Disband that unit of the
FBI?"
Others say the issue is a two-edged sword.
"The fact is that having a large number of for.
eign diplomats in the United States does in-
crease their opportunities for spying," a State
Department official said. "A good number of
them are spies. From the FBI's standpoint, the
best thing would be to get rid of the whole lot.
&mini
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"But we've got the same interest on the otner
side," this official said, citing likely retaliation
against U.S. diplomats and intelligence operatives
abroad. That, he said, "can reduce our opportunity
to find out what's going on in other countries. We
pay a higher price in closed societies."
In a rare role reversal last May, the two de-
partments, appeared to switch identities during a
major diplomatic spat with Mexico. It began
when a Treasury Department official, Customs
Commissioner William von Raab, charged at a
Senate hearing that there was "massive" drug-
related corruption in Mexico and said opium and
marijuana were grown at ranches owned by a
Mexican governor.
Assistant Secretary of State Elliot Abrams,
speaking more diplomatically, said at the hear-
ing, "We have told the Mexicans in no uncertain
terms that we are deeply troubled by widespread
drug-related corruption."
This time, it was Me 's turn to try to patch
up diplomatic relations. He denounced what he
called "reckless charges," praised Mexico's co-
operation in the war on drugs and told Mexican
Attorney General Sergio Garcia Ramirez that
the allegations did not represent the position of
the U.S. government.
Meese denied that he had undercut the State
Department and von Raab's allegations of cor-
ruption. But some officials said the conflicting
signals gave the impression that U.S. policy to-
ward Mexico was in disarray.
Behind Meese's burst of personal diplomacy,
sources said, was concern that such public crit-
icism would endanger his behind-the-scenes drug
negotiations with Mexico.
"Meese is a strong believer in the value of per-
sonal, one-on-one relationships," a ranking justice
official said. "He has worked very hard on his re-
lationship with Garcia Ramirez. His concern was
that [the criticism) weakens Garcia Ramirez ...
and that weakens his ability to get anything done."
At the State Department, however, some of-
ficials echoed the argument often made by
Meese's prosecutors that corruption should not
be papered over to preserve high-level ties.
Meese and his aides "have very close relation-
ships at the working level with the Mexican au-
thorities, which they don't want to upset," a
State Department official said. "But sometimes
it's necessary to put a little pressure on the guys
higher up to get more cooperation."
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Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/01/26: CIA-RDP90-00965R000403620012-7