SOVIET THREAT TOWARD IRAN OVERSTATED, CASEY CONCLUDED

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000807550029-9
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 17, 2012
• Sequence Number: 29
• Publication Date: January 13, 1987
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/01/17: CIA-RDP90-00965R000807550029-9
WASHINGTON POST
13 January 1987
Soviet Threat Toward Iran
Overstated, Casey Concluded
By Bob Woodward and Dan Morgan
W MImtytoo P)t ,,tdt Wro,r-,
CIA Director William J. Casey
concluded in a revised intelligence
assessment last spring that the So-
viets were less likely to attack Iran
or have influence in a post-Kho-
meini regime than the CIA believed
in 1985, according to informed
sources.
Casey's amended analysis ap-
pears to have called into question a
primary White House rationale for
the secret sale of U.S. arms to Iran,
which President Reagan ordered in
January 1986 partly to assist Iran
against "intervention by the Soviet
Union."
The 1986 Central Intelligence
Agency assessment, called a Special
National Intelligence Estimate
(SNIE), was issued under Casey's
name and endorsed by the heads of
U.S. intelligence agencies. As such,
it was intended to represent the
best collective judgment of these
agencies.
Casey has taken great pride in
the formal intelligence estimates,
having said repeatedly that they
help guide administration policy,
according to informed sources.
The 25-page, highly classified
document substantially altered con-
clusions reached a year earlier by
one of Casey's national intelligence
officers, Graham Fuller, that there
was a great threat to Iran from its
Soviet neighbor. According 'to
sources, Fuller's paper also stated
that the Iranian government was
weakening; the analysis emphasized
efforts being made by the Soviet
Union to gain influence in Iran.
Casey's revised assessment was
issued to the White House before
perhaps the most dramatic of the
arms shipments to Iran in May
1986, when former national secu-
rity adviser Robert C. McFarlane
flew to Tehran with weapons in
hopes of freeing U.S. hostages held
by Iran-backed Lebanese extrem-
ists in Beirut.
One senior administration official
the Russians are not coming to
Iran."
Another source who recently re-
viewed the SNIE added, "It said the
Russian threat was not that great, that the
Soviets were not about to jump into Iran
.... The urgency of the Fuller study had
abated."
The Tudeh communist party, which Aya-
tollah Ruhollah Khomeini had outlawed in
1983, was inactive in [ran and seemed to
have little influence, the SNIE concluded.
Some of this assessment was based on
intelligence provided by the Iranian con-
tacts being used by the National Security
Council in the arms deal-the "moderates"
the White House believed existed in the
Khomeini regime.
It could not be established why the CIA
decided to issue a revised SNIE last spring.
The revision was undertaken at a time
when some government analysts were
skeptical of Fuller's earlier study and
wanted a more comprehensive followup stu-
dy.
Also in the spring of 1983 when the
Tudeh party was closed down, the CIA se-
cretly provided a list to the Khomeini re-
gime of Soviet KGB agents and collabo-
rators operating in Iran, sources told The
Washington Post last year. Two hundred
suspects were executed, 18 Soviet diplo-
mats were expelled and the Tudeh party
leaders were imprisoned. Well-placed
sources said that Soviet influence in [ran
has been insignificant since the Tudeh party
was outlawed.
In another development yesterday relat-
ed to the Iran affair, the chairman and rank-
ing Republican member of the Senate Se-
lect Committee on Intelligence said they
hoped to release a new report on its inquiry
into the Iran-contra affair in the next two
weeks.
Sen. William S. Cohen (R-Maine) and the
committee's new Democratic chairman,
Sen. David L. Boren (Okla.), said the panel
planned to issue a shortened version of the
report that the committee voted on Jan. 5
not to make public in the waning hours of
the 99th Congress.
The Maine Republican said this version
would probably contain a summary of the
who read the revised estimate said evidence, and "perhaps" a summary of the
yesterday, "It essentially said that conclusions, including an assertion that the
committee had uncovered no evidence to
this point that Reagan knew of a diversion
of funds from Iran arms sales to rebels
fighting the Nicaraguan government.
However, Cohen said during a luncheon
meeting with reporters, the report would
make clear that the committee had con-
ducted only a "preliminary inquiry," not a
formal investigation, and had not taken tes-
timony from a number of key witnesses.
Cohen, who became vice chairman of the
newly constituted intelligence committee in
the new Congress, was the only Republican
to vote against release of the earlier version
of the report, portions of which have been
widely reported. He said he did so because
the report was not complete, the testimony
of 12 witnesses had not been transcribed
and the senators had not had a chance to
examine all documents submitted by gov-
ernment agencies.
Cohen also expressed concern that re-
lease of the full 160-page report drafted by
the committee staff would have tipped off
potential future witnesses about the nature
of testimony provided by others, thus pos-
sibly hindering subsequent inquiries.
Also yesterday, the CIA strongly denied a
New York Times report that Iran and Iraq
were fed "disinformation"-deliberately
distorted or inaccurate U.S. intelligence
data-to advance the Reagan administra-
tion's goals in the region. The article "is
false," said CIA spokesman George Lauder.
who said it would be "stupid" for the United
States to provide false information to either
side.
The Times report said the disinformation
was provided to prevent either side from
winning their bloody war, now in its seventh
year.
One congressional source yesterday said
that American intelligence, which was
passed to Iran as a sign of "good faith" in
efforts to free U.S. hostages, was generally
accurate except for one occasion when "the
Iraqi forces were described as stronger
than they really were so that the Iranians
would not attack."
Secretary of State George P. Shultz,
traveling from Nigeria to the Ivory Coast
yesterday, said of the disinformation
charge, "That's news to me. So far as I
know, any information that we've been giv-
ing to Iraq has been dead on the mark."
In other developments:
^ David M. Absbire, the president's special
counsel on the Iran affair, met with Reagan
yesterday and the White House later issued
a statement saying Abshire discussed his
objective of speeding up disclosure of infor-
Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/01/17: CIA-RDP90-00965R000807550029-9
 Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/01/17: CIA-RDP90-00965R000807550029-9
mation to Congress, the independent coun-
sel investigating the Iran-contra affair and
the Tower Commission, which is reviewing
the NSC. The statement said Abshire also
discussed efforts to maintain a "bipartisan
focus" during the inquiries. A spokesman
said Abshire had no timetable for releasing
information, and the statement made no
mention of releasing details to the public.
^ The U.S. attorney in Manhattan said yes-
terday that independent counsel Lawrence
E. Walsh does not wish to take over the
case of 13 international businessmen ac-
cused of conspiring to sell more than $2 bil-
lion in weapons to Iran.
The defendants in the case, who include a
lawyer for Saudi billionaire Adhan Kha-
shoggi and a retired Israeli army general,
have argued that they believed their pro-
posed sales would receive U.S. government
approval, and have suggested links between
individuals involved in the sting operation
and those involved in the administration's
arms sales.
U.S. District Court Judge Leonard B.
Sand, who is handling the Iranian arms sting
case, had asked prosecutors to inform him
by yesterday whether Walsh planned to as-
sume control of that prosecution as well as
other contra-related probes that he has ta-
ken over.
Staff writers David B. Ottaway, David
Hoffman, Ruth Marcus and Walter Pincus
and researcher Barbara Fein man
contributed to this report.
Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/01/17: CIA-RDP90-00965R000807550029-9