SNOOP'S EYE ON THE CIA

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000807540013-7
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 12, 2012
• Sequence Number: 13
• Publication Date: October 17, 1987
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/12 : CIA-RDP90-00965R000807540013-7
STAT
Press its publication. In Amer-
ica, they do these things on an
altogether different scale.
Bob Woodward, the super.
hero of American investigative
journalism, sought out the
dying former head of the Ameri-
can Central Intelligence
Agency, William Casey, a man
who by any standards ought to
have shunned his company. The
astonished journalist was
granted not one interview, but
four dozen, which form the sub-
stance of this book. It is as if Sir
Maurice Oldfield had settled
down to dictate his memoirs to
Paul Foot. The American
Government, in this case, has
done precisely nothing.
The reason may be that the
bleary-eyed , stumble-worded
conspirator depicted in the book
may have thought he could pull
one over Mr Woodward. Who
better to present an old spy-
master's departing world view
than the impeccably anti-estab-
lishment Mr Woodward, daz-
zled at having penetrated the
innermost sanctum of .the anti.
christ, the CIA? If so, Casey has
for the most part succeeded.
Jr ain has been gripped by the VEIL: the Secret Wars
saga surrounding Peter and the CIA, 1981-1987.
Wright's book "Spycatcher" By Bob Woodward.
and the British Government's Simon & Schuster. ?14.95.
unsuccessful attempts to sup-
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The Washington Times
The Wall Street Journal
The Christian Science Monitor
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There is very little in the
book that is either new, or par.
ticularly startling. Casey's suc-
cessor, William Webster, has
deplored the fact that a couple
of agents out in the field have
been "burnt" by Casey's indis.
cretions. Mr Woodward's alle.
gation that El Salvador's Presi-
dent Duarte was a CIA "agent"
who "may not have known he
was giving information to the
CIA" has ruffled the feathers of
a small American ally: but then,
if Mr Duarte didn't know, he
can hardly be blamed, can he?
Mr Woodward's one really
horrifying revelation is that 80
people were killed by a car
bomb in Lebanon in 1985 in a
CIA-instigated attempt to kill a
prominent Shia terrorist,
Sheikh Fadlallah. The lesson
from this is that such things
should not be left to incompe-
tent surrogates: the Saudi secu-
rity forces had been given
charge of the operation.
The central theme of the
book, that Casey conducted a
covert foreign policy in parallel
to the State Department, is
unsurprising. The CIA, like
most intelligence agencies, is
directly responsible to the head
of government and to some
extent inevitably competes with
the Foreign Service profession.
als. Casey's Picture of the CIA's
intelligence-gathering in Iran-
CIA cables "had little more fac-
tual content than the daily
newspaper and television
reports" - suggests serious
shortcomings, but also a less
sinister organisation than Mr
Woodward would have us
believe. I
One thing the CIA did get
right was the death of the
Soviet leader, Konstantin
Chernenko, which the agency
claims happened days before its
official announcement. At the
time Casey reckoned, wrongly,
that Mr Gorbachev would be no
different from his predecessors.
Mr Woodward has little new
to offer on the most controver-
sial subject in the book, Iran.
gate, an operation carried our
by Casey's protege, Col Oliver.
North. The scandal shows the
CIA in its most reckless and
cynical light, using money from
selling arms to Iran, in a forlorn
attempt to extricate American
hostages, to provide funding to
Nicaragua's contra guerrillas.
The first was bad policy, the
second illegal.
If, as seems now to have been
rather inconclusively estab-
lished, President Reagan knew
nothing of this, then Casey was
indeed guilty of conducting an
"alternative" foreign policy,
and a thoroughly discreditable
one at that. Yet Mr Woodward
sheds no light on the question
of whether the President was
told and not much on whether
even Casey knew. The book
ends,in its inimitable gumshoe
prose, with a now celebrated
deathbed confession:
You knew, didn't you, I said . .
you knew all along. His head
jerked up hard. He stared and
finally nodded yes. Why? I asked,
"I believed." What? "I believed."
Then he was asleep, and I didn't
get to ask another question.
This account has since been
challenged by Casey's widow,
who says Mr Woodward could
not have got into the closely
guarded hospital room. This
seems beside the point: more
glaring is the way the journalist
hangs his book on an anecdote
so clearly open to misunder-
standing, and his quasi-macabre
pushiness.
Reading Mr Woodward, the
new journalism" sounds
rather old, harking back to dear
old foot-in-the-door reporting
and a dated Chandler writing
style; its methods seem no more
dignified than the undercover
work condemned in this book.
Robert Harvey
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/12 : CIA-RDP90-00965R000807540013-7